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STUDIES

Church History.

REV. REUBEN PARSONS, D. D.

” That a theologian should be well versed In
history. Is shown by the fate of those who,
through Ignorance of history, have fallen into
error. . . . Whenever we theologians preach,
argue, or explain Holy Writ, we enter the
domain of history.—”

Melchior Canos, Loc. Theol.y B. XL, c.

TTOHLi. T7T.

CENT. XIX. (Part II.)

FR. PUSTET & CO.,

NEW YORK AND CINCINNATI.

1900.

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imprimatur

* MICHAEL AUGUSTINUS,

Archicpiscopus Neo-Eboracensis.

REV. REUBEN PARSONS, D. D.

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v. 4,

0:5;*

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CONTENTS OF VOLUME VI.

CENT. XIXHPART II.)

Chapter Page

I. The Bismarckian So-Called “War For Civilization.” 1

II. Freemasonry in Latin America. Garcia Moreno, the “ Modern

St. Louis.” 44

III. The Clerical Victims of the Commune of 1871 85

IV. The Third French Republic as a Persecutor of the Church Ill

V. A Fighting Clergy and the Ecclesiastical Canons 132

VI. The Pontificate of Leo XIII 139

VII. Pope Leo XIII. and the Third French Republic 203

VIII. Pope Leo XIII. and the Hpme Rule Movement in Ireland 216

IX. Pope Leo XIII. and the English People. The Decision on Ang-
lican “Orders.” 225

X. Pope Leo XIII. and the Austrian Empire. The Questions of

Mixed and Civil Marriages in Hungary 236

XI. Pope Leo XIII. and the German Empire 265

XII. Pope Leo XIII. and the Russian Empire 283

XIII. Pope Leo XIII. and African Slavery. The Apostolate of Car-

dinal Lavigerie 291

XIV. Pope Leo XIII. and the Educational Question in Belgium 310

XV. Pope Leo XIII. and the Church in the United States of America:

The School Question. “ Cahenslyism.” The Condemnation of

So-Called “ Americanism.” 319

XVI. Pope Leo XIII. and Socialism. The Labor Question 354

XVII. The “ International ” and Anarchism 383

XVI IT. The Vagaries of Father Curci, S. J 400

iv.

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CONTENTS OF VOLUME VI. V.

Chapter Page,

XIX. The Apostasy of Doellinger 413

XX. Louis Veuillot 427

XXL Cesare Cantu, Prince of Modern Historians 441

XXII. The Place of the Miraculous in History. The Miracles of Lourdes. 448
Appendix : Chronological Tables, showing the Roman Pontiffs, Principal
Rulers, Councils, Ecclesiastical Writers, and Sectarians, During
Century XIX 493

SUPPLEMENT.

I. The Identity of the Three “ Magi ” or Wise Men of the East 497

II. The Legend of the Wandering Jew 502

III. The Alleged Idolatry of Pope St. Marcellinus 510

IV. Consecrated Virgins Among the Early Christians . 520

V. Some Salient Features of the Middle Age (Complement of Chap.

1, Vol. II.) 529*

VI. The Conversion of the Franks. The Alleged Cruelties of Clovis

and of St. Clotilda. ... 585

VII. The Reign and Character of St Louis IX. The Calumnies of

Michelet on this Monarch 614.

VIII. The Sieges of Rhodes ; Episodes in the History of the Soldier-

Monks 646

IX. The Fable of the Two-Wived Count of Gleichen 666

X. The Controversy on the Chinese Rites.’. 671

General Topical Index 689

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CHAPTER I.

THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.”

After the persecution of Mgr. Dunin, archbishop of Gne-
sen and Posen, and of Mgr. Droste-Vischering, archbishop
of Cologne (1), the Prussian government accorded a period
of rest to its Catholic subjects ; and when the Constitution of
1850 had been wrung from Frederick William IV., the situation
of the Catholics became at least tolerable, principally because
of the creation of a “ Catholic Department ” in the Ministry
of Worship and of Public Instruction — an institution, the
benefit of which has been persistently exaggerated by German
-enemies of the Church, but which certainly enabled the
Prussian Catholics to lay their complaints before their govern-
ment. The Catholics of Prussia were grateful for this and
^ f other petty instalments of justice ; and the Catholics of other

German states so far forgot the almost constant history of
the northern kingdom as to believe that it could desire to
treat their religion with something approaching to equity.
When the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 had been declared,
and the Bavarian Diet was hesitating as to the course to be
pursued by the Cabinet of Munich, one of the most influential
leaders of the Catholic party, Peter Reichensperger, per-
suaded his colleagues to vote for the Prussian alliance. No
more convincing proof than this fact can be needed to de-
monstrate that the Catholics of Germany trusted the govern-
ment of Prussia at that time. But they did not know the spir-
it of that government, remarks one of its victims (2), as it was

(1) 8oe our Vol. vM p. 254 and p. 257.

(2) History of the Persecution of the Catholic Church in Prussia (1870-1876), by Mgr.
Janiszewski, AuxUiary Bishop of Posen and Gnesen, Formerly Member of the Diet of
Berlin. Paris, 1872.

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known by the Polish subjects of the Hohenzollern — by those
heroic Poles, whose complaints against the government of
Berlin the deluded German Catholics were then wont to de-
ride. The Catholics of Germany seemed not to realize that
their co-religionists of the Rhenish Provinces were treated
with comparative gentleness, simply because of their geo-
graphical position ; because of their proximity to the French
frontier. “It was a great fault on our part,” said another
victim, Mgr. Ketteler, bishop of Mayence, in the preface to*
one of his writings, “ to have believed in the stability of the
Prussian Constitution, in the rights which it plainly allowed
us. We were blamable for having believed that in Prussia,
justice could triumph over the inveterate prejudice against
Catholics, and over party passion. We were deceived ; but
the fault is not one which should cause us to blush.” As
for William L, the Catholics had indeed felt some anxiety
when he mounted the throne in 1861, and precisely because
of his Masonic affiliations ; but like his chancellor, William
I. was apt at dissimulation. At as late a period as 1870, just
after the new German Empire had been proclaimed at Ver-
sailles, and when the dogs of persecution were about to be
unleashed against his too faithful Catholic subjects, the
“ pious and loyal ” emperor-king feigned an affectionate inter-
est in the independence of the Holy See which no Catholic
monarch of the time manifested. Replying to an address
from the Knights of Malta of the Rhenish Provinces and of
Westphalia, he said : “ I regard the occupation of Rome by
the Italians as an act of violence ; and when this war is end-
ed, I shall not fail to take it into consideration, in concert
with other sovereigns.” But the reverberations of the last
cannonades of the Franco-German war had scarcely died
away, when the blindly loyal Prussian Catholics found them-
selves denounced, threatened, and finally crushed ; and many
of the priests and Sisters of Charity, who were brutally thrust
out of the empire, had just been decorated by the persecutor
in testimony to their heroic care for the German wounded,
both Protestant and Catholic, during the recent struggle.

At that time Catholics wondered, and ever since those
days they have wondered, as to the earthly reason for this-

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 3

persecution. Of course, tlie prime motive was to be sought
in the implacable hatred of the powers of hell for the
Church of God ; but by what arguments had Satan induced
“ German intelligence ” to become his instrument in the at-
tempt to render the Hohenzollern successful in a task which
had been impossible to the Hohenstaufen ? Some discerned
the cause of the persecution in the revolutionary principles
adopted by Prussia before 1866, and which were then ap-
plied— principles which logically implied the direst conse-
quences (1). Others ascribed the madness of the “ Iron
Chancellor ” and of his imperial tool to the arrogance which
had resulted from the war in which Germany, aided by the
anger of God against France, had been so unexpectedly
successful — an arrogance which seemed to ask : “ Who is
our God? ” These latter speculativists deemed it not un-
natural that Prussia, born of sacrilege, should have con-
ceived the idea that to her was reserved the “ historical
mission ” to complete the work of Luther. However, the
Prussian government itself, its official and its “ officious ”
press, and its agents among the deputies of parliament, en-
deavored to justify the barbarous “ War for Civilization,”*
firstly, because the Vatican Council had defined the dogma*
of Papal Infallibility ; secondly, because the Catholic Church
had “ assumed an attitude of aggression against the laws
of the State and thirdly, because the Catholics had con-
tributed to the formation of the parliamentary party which
was styled the Centre, and which Bismarck stigmatized as a
“ mobilization against the State.” In regard to the first
excuse, first formulated by Bismarck in a despatch dated
May 14, 1872, and which was acclaimed by “ German intel-
ligence ” as though it believed that the Roman Pontiff was
about to lead several millions of soldiers who would force
all heretics and Jews to obey his behests, we need only say
that less than four months before he wrote this despatch*
that is, on Jan. 30, the chancellor had declared that it was
the duty of the State to abstain from all interference in the
dogmatic teachings of the Church. On this occasion, dur-
ing a parliamentary discussion as to whether the “ Lut^

(1) Janiszewski ; loc. cit.% p. 11.

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Law,” subjecting the pulpit to police supervision, should
be applied also to primary schools, Bismarck said : “ The
Prussian government is very far from wishing to enter on
any dogmatic disputations concerning the changes (sic) in the
teachings of the Catholic Church ; for every one of those
teachings, which are received by so many German citizens,
ought to be sacred for both the nation and the government”
As for the second excuse, the pretense that the Church was
guilty of “ aggressions ” on the authority of the State, the
chancellor never pretended to substantiate his charge ; when
summoned in parliament to produce his proofs, he simply
replied : “ Search in your hearts, gentlemen ! ” and the Lib-
erals exploded with laughter, because of what they deemed
a side-splitting joke. The most bitter reproaches, on the
part of the Catholic deputies, never induced the persecutor
to defend his course with anything else than bare assertion ;
hence it was that in the session of Feb. 4, 1874, Mallinckrodt
thus reproved the Minister of Public Instruction : u The
deputy, Reichensperger, in his last discourse on this matter,
frequently asked the Minister for proofs of his allegations, but
fhe Minister thought proper to remain silent. As for me, I
must regard this course as worthy of an intelligent man ;
but only in the supposition that the Minister could give no
satisfactory reply. But in spite of this silence, the govern-
ment, realizing that it ought to show the world that it is
obliged to defend itself, and knowing that it cannot justify
its conduct, continually advances, in all of its arguments for
new laws, innumerable assertions which it presents as
axioms. Thus to-day, in the first paragraph which treats of
its motives, it tells us of ‘ proceedings which are hostile to
the State,’ of a war ‘ which is forced on the government,’
and of ‘means which the State must adopt in its own defence.’
There is as much truth in all these axioms as there was in
the famous announcement of the wolf to the lamb in the
ancient fable.” The third excuse, the pretended crime of
the Catholics in helping to form the party of the Centre, a
party which was composed of Protestants as well as of Cath-
olics ; every man of sense in Germany knew well that the
object of the Centre was not to curtail the prerogatives of

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THE BISMARCKIAN 80-CALLED “ WAR FOR CmUZA'JlON.”

the new empire, but solely to uphold the principles which
are preservative of true liberty and real civilization, princi-
ples which Bismarck had threatened from the moment of the
triumph of Germany over France. After the war with Aus-
tria in 1866, it became evident to all the conservatives of
Prussia that the royal chancellor had taken Cavour for his
model ; and after the Franco-German war, when a false Lib-
eralism began to dominate all Germany, the fears of the
conservatives were augmented, although many still retained
some confidence in that William I. who had so persistently
talked about God in all his telegrams from the battle-fields of
France, and in that Bismarck whose conservatism had been
so absurdly extravagant since 1848. But the mask soon fell
from the faces of both emperor and chancellor ; and then,
in the spring of 1871, a few of the principal conservatives (1)
met in Berlin, and drew up the following programme of
political action : “ I. To defend as a fundamental principle,
the federal character of the German Empire (< Justitia fimda-
mentum regnorum ), and consequently to prevent, by every
possible means, any change in the federal character of the
Constitution of the empire, and to yield not one particle of
the independence of the several states, unless such conces-
sion should be absolutely necessary for the integrity of the
said empire. II. To uphold, as far as possible, the moral
and material welfare of all classes of the population ; and
to endeavor to procure Constitutional guarantees for civil
and religious liberty, and above all for the rights of religious
associations, against the violence of the legislature. III.
Guided by these principles, the party (of the Centre) will de-
liberate on all subjects presented in the imperial parlia-
ment ; but its members will always be free to vote in a sense
contrary to that of the majority.” Certainly there was.
nothing in this programme which could justify the Bis-
marckian assertion that the Centre was a “ mobilization
against the State.”

What were the true causes of the pretended “ War for
Civilization ” ? The prime author of the persecution was

(1) Savigny, Windhorst (of Meppen), Mallinckrodt, Probst, Reichensperger (01pe)„ LOv-
venstein, and Vrajtag.

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Bismarck ; but it is certain that the idea of such a move-
ment would not have been conceived even by that self-con-
fident personage, had he not found the way for it already
prepared — had he not found in nearly every German Prot-
estant, Jewish, and infidel mind, a number of notions which
had attained the dignity of axioms, and which had only
waited for Prussian development in order to actuate them-
selves in a persecution of the Catholic Church. The first of
these notions was that of the omnipotence of the State, the
Caesarism of ancient Paganism, which regarded the people
as existing for the State or emperor, ignoring the rational
conception that the State or emperor should be for the peo-
ple. “ These instinctive ideas which dominated in Prussia
after the Reformation,” says Janiszewski, “ were soon sys-
tematized by German philosophy ; Fichte effected much in
this regard, but the Pantheism of Hegel, with its theory of
:an absolute State, perfected the system. That which the
French Revolution actuated in a moment of delirium, Ger-
man philosophy reduced to precision, recognizing as a su-
preme being a certain absolute which, according to the var-
ious systems, is sometimes ideal, and sometimes material.
This absolute idea, this supreme something with various
names, is by its own nature without reason and without
consciousness. Thus Hartmann, one of the latest philoso-
phers of that school, called its teaching ‘ the philosophy of
that which has no consciousness of itself.’ That which
the Christian world has always termed ‘ God ’ is, according
■to that school, an ideal unity, a Universal All which lias an
existence only in the imagination of its adherents. This
creation of the unregulated mind of man is, to speak clearly,
s, complete deification of man ; and since, according to this
system, the State is collective individualism endowed with
power, it follows that the system is the deification of the
State. The relation of man to the State is that of a drop to
the ocean in which it is lost. ... No wonder that with such
theories for a foundation of philosophy, we hear men de-
manding a National Church ! If God is confined within the
limits of a nation, of a State, how can the Church, estab-
lished for His glorification, be universal? On theories like

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAB FOR CIVILIZATION.” 7

these rests all science in Protestant Germany, and especially
in Prussia. On these principles are based history, the
natural sciences, political economy, and above all, Public
Law. From the chairs of the Universities these ideas spread
into the gymnasia , where professors and students, often in
good faith, advocate principles and opinions whose baneful
nature they do not perceive, believing that through them
they will attain the light of true civilization. This doctrine
has penetrated all Prussian intelligence, especially in the
bureaucracy, from the Ministers down to the ushers ; and
the journalists propagate it among the people, without under-
standing it themselves. The enlightened men of Prussia
have been trained in these ideas (1). I know not whether
the authors of the persecution really proposed to annihilate
Christianity ; but it is indubitable that, starting from such
principles, and holding such opinions concerning the State,
they struck at the heart of Christianity.” Based as it was
on the principles just described, it is not strange that “ Ger-
man science ” should have entertained an extravagant idea
of “ the historical mission of Prussia,” that mystical thing
which was known as “ Borrussianism,” and which was in-
terpreted according to his own whims by every heterodox
politician, Protestant theologaster, and socialistic dreamer
in Prussia, although all of these united in denying the right
of existence to any school of thought which opposed their
fantastic doctrinarianism. It was this “Borrussianism”
that threw Austria out of Germany in 1866 (2) ; and under
the guidance of Bismarck it became the chief instrument in
the latest German persecution of the Church. And it may
be well to note here that in Bismarck, the chief among the

(1) In his famous book entitled The Reptile Fund , Henry Wiittke, professor In the Uni-
versity of Lelpelc, cites a remark made in the public court at Mayence, on Dec. 19, 1873, by
the Imperial procurator, Schcen : “ The emperor is a sacred person, whose majesty is
superior to all the- laws of the State.”

(2) “ During many years, the Prussian Journals, and those which were sold to Prussia,
used the phrase, * The Mission of Prussia in Germany/ to hide the greed of conquest which
tormented the Cabinet of Berlin. After the victory of Prussia (over Austria) in 1866, most
of these Journals went into transports of Joy because Prussia had happily realized the
* unity of Germany/ But a third of the Germans bad been excluded from Germany, and
these gentry prated about the unity of Germany. This unity of Germauy, as it really ex-
ists, means that the lesser sovereigns have become Prussian prefects.” Wuttke ; The
ReptQe Fund , French Transl., p. 158.

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latest apostles of “ Borrussianism,” such a thing as German
patriotism was an unknown quantity during the greater part
of his active political career. After 1848, he belonged to
the Prussian party which was known as the “Junkers,” a
party which was so exclusively Prussian, that it hated the
mention of German unity, and was wont to distinguish it-
self by fastening the German cockades to the tails of dogs.
Alluding to this “ Borrussianism ” of the “ Junkers,” Mgr.
Janiszewski declared in the Diet of Berlin, and not one
voice contradicted him, that Bismarck, the vaunted German
patriot, had hitherto been one of those who lamented :
“ What a pity it is that no one has yet invented a Prussian
language, so that we may not be obliged to speak in that
beggarly German tongue ! ” (1). Unless one remembers the
deep significance of this “ Borrussianism,” he will be un-
able to account for the wicked absurdities of the “ War for
Civilization ” ; with its meaning well fixed in his mind, he
will be surprised by none of the extravagancies which it
originated.

(1) " Bismarck was generally known as an ardent Prussian patriot, as a votary of the
Rouse of Hohenzollern ; but never as a German patriot. He wished to see Prussia, and
its reigning family, great and powerful ; as for Germany, be regarded It as a neighbor
which might be easily conquered, and thus become a means for the aggrandizement of
Prussia. Because Bismarck, at a convenient moment, raised the standard of German
nationality, are we to consider him a German patriot ? Did be not act similarly in Bohe-
mia and Hungary, during bis war against Austria ? His love for a nationality lasted as
long as bis interests demanded such affection. The Me moires of General La Marmora
demonstrate the Prussian patriotism of Bismarck ; he always placed Germany in the rear.
If Germany was to have been governed by the House of Hnpsburg or by that of Wittelsbach
(Bavaria), would the patriotism of Bismarck have upheld German unity ? Would he not
rather have used every means to prevent that unity, as he did in 1S48 and the ensuing
years ? A true patriot considers only the unity of the nation ; he places provincial or
dynastic interests in a secondary position. If we Poles were to-day so happy as to be able
to unite the fragments of our dismembered country, would we dispute as to what family
should wear the crown of Poland ? Would we, merely for a matter of minor importance,
repel from the unity of Poland seven or elvht millions of our brethren, as Bismarck did in
the affair of the Austrian -Germans? The sole object of Bismarck was to clothe all Ger-
mans in the Prussian uniform, and to put a Prussian helmet on every German head. It
was no patriotic enthustasm for Germany that impelled the chancellor to war on the
Catholic Church ; he was impelled by the deeply-rooted ideas of Prussia concerning Its

* historical mission/ and by the Prussian greed of glory, which had been excited by its
recent and unexpected successes. This intellectual and psychological disposition, raised
to the superlative by success, so blinded Bismarck, that he persuaded himself that the

* historical mission ’ of Prussia— or, as it would be termed in Christian language, the

* providential mission *— reposed entirely on bis shoulders ; that he alone was called to
conquer the enemy of the State- Absolute, an enemy which no power of earth bad yet
been able to subdue. Quem Deus punire wtW, .gjemenfcqrt.” Janiszewski ; loc. cit.,
Ch.2.

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 9*

Besides the theory so generally received in Prussia con-
cerning the State-Absolute, and the fantastic notion of a.
“historical mission” on the part of the Brandenburgers,
there were other causes of the “ War for Civilization. ” One
of these was Protestant hatred of Borne ; but that senti-
ment externates itself so naturally, whenever opportunity
is offered, that we are absolved from any necessity of show-
ing, at any great length, how it influenced the chancellor
during the prosecution of the most tremendous of his en-
terprises. Of course there are not wanting publicists who*
would have us believe that the prime motive of Bismarck,,
when he entered on the “ War for Civilization,” was not the-
destruction of the Catholic Church in Germany ; that his
great object was the annihilation of the Centre, the parliamen-
tary party which formed the chief obstacle to the success of his
policy of centralization. And it is true that lie once remarked,
to Ketteler, bishop of Mayence : “ You and your party
desire to undo the work of my policy. You compel me to
war on the Church ; but we shall see who will prove to be
the stronger ” (1). But we cannot forget that as far back
as 1859, Bennigsen, one of the accomplices of Bismarck,
wrote : “ All goes well ; now we have but one citadel to
storm — that of Ultramontanism ” (2). And in the sup-
position that the persecution of the Church was undertaken
merely as a means for crushing the Centre, how can we ac-
count for the fact that six months before the formation of
the Centre, that is, on Oct. 24, 1870, the crown-prince, the*
future Frederick III., wrote in that private diary which was-
afterward published by Geffken : “ Bismarck tells my
brother-in-law that after this war we shall enter on a cam-
paign against Infallibility ? ” A few days before the crown-
prince made this entry, that is, on Sept. 13, the chancellor,
talking to the mayor of Beims on the influence of the Latin
peoples whom he hated so virulently, exclaimed : “ Once
that we have settled with Catholicism, they will all dis-
appear.” But not to multiply proofs that Bismarck’s per-
secuting spirit antedated the birth of the Centre, we note that

(1) The Paris JJnivers , Nov. 13. 1878.

(2) Bazin ; Windihorsti His Allies , and His Adversaries , p. 41. Paris, 1896.

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the Polish Jew, Lasker, the founder of the “ National
Liberal ” party, avowed in the Reichstag, in Nov., 1873,
that he and his friends had arranged with Bismarck in 1869
for an immediate war on the Catholic Church ; and that
hostilities had been deferred, merely because German unity
was not yet completed. These testimonies lead us to reject
the belief that hatred of the Catholic Church was not the
primary motive for the “ War for Civilization but we do
" not deny that Bismarck regarded a religious war as a dis-
traction for his political enemies — one that would enable
him to avoid many parliamentary quarrels. And for the
purpose of attracting to himself the dog of Liberalism,
what bone could he throw into its gaping jaws, which would
be more toothsome than Catholicism ? Again, a war on the
Church would afford the absolutistic chancellor an oppor-
tunity for the destruction of the comparatively liberal
Prussian Constitution of 1850, which contravened his
projects in many instances. And now, before wre dismiss
this subject of the causes of the “ War for Civilization,” we
must not fail to notice the close alliance which then, as ever,
subsisted between the Prussian government and Free-
masonry. General Selazinski spoke the exact truth when, in
his Freemasonry and Christendom , which was printed in
Berlin with the authorization of the Grand Lodge of Ger-
many, he said : “ Among all the European powers which
have concerned themselves with Masonry, only two have
been consistent : Prussia, which has always protected our
order ; and the Papacy, which has ever opposed it.” William
I. had been an ardent Mason since 1840. On Nov. 5, 1853,
while he was still heir-apparent, he officiated, in his ca-
pacity of Protector of all the German Lodges, at the in-
itiation of his son, the future Frederick HI. ; and in his
salutatory discourse, he said to the young adept : “ Be
a firm support to this order ! If you are such, you will
not only assure your future, but you will have the grand satis-
faction of having propagated around yourself that which is
beautiful and true ” (1). When the “ War for Civilization ”
had been well inaugurated, the organs of Masonry deemed

(1) The MasoDic Berliner Tageblatt for Oct., 1882.

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THE BISMABCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION. ” ‘ 11

it wise to forego their customary policy of reticence con-
cerning the campaigns and victories of the order; they
could not restrain their joy as they pictured to them-
selves a speedy “ destruction of the infamous on e” and they
called on the earth to witness that the adepts of the Square
and Triangle had taken the chief part in the foundation of
the new German Empire, and in the “ glorious ” war then
being waged against the Papacy. Thus the Rhenish Herald
of Oct. 25, 1873, proclaimed : “ We are justified in asserting
that it was the spirit of Freemasonry which, in the last ar-
raignment of Ultramontanism, pronounced sentence through
the ever-memorable letter of His Majesty to the Pope.
The ideas of the Emperor William, who, as every one
knows, is a Freemason, do not date from yesterday ; nor
have those ideas been inspired only by his actual counsel-
lors, as certain parties would have men believe. Long ago,
when the emperor was in the flower of his age, he announced
those ideas in a session of our order, at a time when the
world held a very different opinion in regard to him. On
that occasion, he gave utterance to sentiments which befitted
a prince and a man; and he has proved himself faith-
ful to them. If he now fulfils his promises, future ages will
praise him.” A few days after this interesting effusion was
published, the Freemasons Journal of Leipsic perorated
as follows : “ When Freemasonry is thus brought into the
presence of two antagonists, that is, in presence of the emperor
who, in his fraternal capacity, protects our order, and in the
presence of the Pope, who curses it and would sink it into hell,
it can and ought take but one side. It must range itself on
the side where it is loved. . . . Together with the emperor,
we are progressing toward freedom of mind without sub-
jection, toward a pacification of society without any dis-
tinction of creeds, and toward an abolition of all egoistic
prejudices. . . . That venerable hero is our Brother (Will-
iam I. ) ; he is bound to us by an indestructible chain. The
ideal pursued by our order associates him with us ; with us
and for us, he handles the Mallet of force, the Square of wis-
dom, and the Compass of a common inspiration which serves
to regulate, according to an ideal type, acts which are worthy

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of man We are confident that all our Brethren are ani-

mated by these sentiments, and that they will not forget, in
the banquets which are given on stated occasions, to kindle
three 6 res in honor of, and for the love of, the noble old man
who knows how to combat the powers of darkness which
would destroy our projects.”

The first information concerning the hostile intentions of
the Prussian government in their regard was conveyed to the
Catholics by a sequence of articles in the Gazette of the Cross ,
a journal which was practically owned by Bismarck ; and very
soon, that is, during the first months of 1871, all the subsi-
dized press — those journals which now came to be known as
the “ reptile press ” — began to ring the changes on the impu-
dent lies of the chancellor. The world was informed that, hav-
ing vanquished “ her external enemies,” Germany had now de-
termined to conquer “ her internal foes ” ; namely, the Ultra-
montanes who, by their acceptance of the decrees of the Vati-
can Council, had “ caused a lamentable division in the Catholic
* Church, and were thus endangering the peace of the empire.”’
It was not the intention of His Majesty, the world was*
assured, to disturb the “ real Catholics ” (so the chancellor
styled the handful of Dollingerites) ; the enemy was that
“ Jesuitism ” which had become insupportable, since the de-
claration of Papal Infallibility. The first attack on the
Catholics, or on Jesuitism , as the lying Minister described
it, was the suppression of the Catholic Department in the
Ministry of Worship on July 8, 1871 — a measure which was
equivalent to a declaration that thereafter the government
would pay no attention to any grievances which the Catholics
might suffer. The next blow was directed against a dogma
of Catholic faith, and against ecclesiastical jurisdiction. A
priest named Wolmann, professor of religion in the Catholic
College of Braunsberg, having persisted in rejecting the Vat-
ican decrees, his ordinary, the bishop of Ermland, had ex-
communicated him. In spite of the protests of the parents
of the students, the Minister of Worship threatened with ex-
pulsion all the lads who would not take their lessons in the
Catholic faith from an excommunicated man. The third en-
terprise was directed against “ the abuses of the pulpit.” A

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 13

law was proposed in the German Reichstag by the Bavarian
Minister, Lutz, an avowed patron of the “ Old Catholics,” ac-
cording to which imprisonment for perhaps two years was
to be the punishment of any priest who, in a church or else-
where, in a sermon or in any kind of speech, should * dis-
turb public tranquillity.” This law, sacrificing to “ Bor-
russianism ” the liberty and honor of all the German clergy,
was rushed through the Reichstag on Nov. 28. In Feb., 1872,
the same Reichstag was asked to consider a law which would
deprive the clergy of their right of surveillance over primary
schools ; the law was passed, and the consequences were terri-
ble. In some places, the new government inspectors forbade
the children to use the “ superstitious ” salutation, “ Praised
be Jesus Christ!” universally given by German Catholics
where we are satisfied with a “ How d’y do ? ” In many dis-
tricts the crucifixes and holy pictures were thrown out of the
schools, and were replaced by portraits of their Sacred Majes-
ties, the emperor and empress. In nearly all schools the
little pupils were taught that the Biblical stories with which
their. Catholic teachers had loaded their memories, were mere
fables. Some inspectors gave to young girls themes for
composition, which were more “ patriotic ” than moral ; thus, a
favorite subject was : “What are the sentiments which ought
to agitate the heart of a young woman, when she sees an officer
of hussars ? ” (1). From the middle of May until the end of
June, the imperial government occupied itself with measures
for the expulsion of all Jesuits and their “affiliated orders ”
from the empire. The impudence of the design was so pat-
ent, however, that it became necessary to show that the gov-
ernmental action was caused by the “ pressure of public opin-
ion.” On Sept. 22, 1871, the “ Old Catholics ” had proclaimed,
in their Congress of Munich, that the good of the State deman-
ded the expulsion of the Jesuits. “It is notorious,” said the

Dollingerites in the sixth article of theiT programme, “that the
said Society of Jesus is the cause of the dissensions at present
troubling the Catholic Church. This Society uses its power-
ful influence in order to propagate in the hierarchy, among the
clergy, and among the people, tendencies which are contrcny

<1) Jajtiszewski ; loc. cit., p. 115.

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to civilization , dangerous to tlie State, and anti-nationaL It'
preaches a false morality, and it strives for power. Therefore 4
we are of opinion that peace, happiness, and unity in the
Church, as well as amicable relations between the Church and
civil society, are impossible, if an end is not put to the bane-
ful proceedings of this Society.” It was to this declaration of
a few excommunicated recalcitrants that Bismarck pointed,
when he asserted that even among Catholics, “ public opinion ”
called for the banishment of the Jesuits. That the same ac-
tion was demanded by “ public opinion ” among Protestants,
was said to be evident from the fact that a representative body
of Protestants, who had met at Darmstadt eight days after the
“ Old Catholic ” pronouncement, had adopted a resolution con-
demning the Jesuits in the strongest terms. In the parliamen-
tary debates to which this “ public opinion ” gave rise, it was.
evident that the ministerial orators were attacking the Catholic
Church, although the Jesuits alone were mentioned ; one of
these declaimers, Windtliorst of Berlin (never to be con-
founded with his uncle, Windthorst of Meppen), in a moment
of passion, exclaimed : “ There is no other way. ‘ Ecrasez
T in fume. ! ’ ” By a vote of 181 against 63, the German par-
liament banished from the empire “ the Society of Jesus, as
well as all the orders or congregations affiliated to it.” In vain
the Catholics of Westphalia and of the Khenish Provinces
appealed for relief to the much-vaunted justice of the emper-
or ; the “ pious and loyal ” William I. refused to receive their
deputation, and on July 4, 1872, he signed the infamous de-
cree. The reader will note that this ordinance was framed so
as to affect not only the Society of Jesus, but also “ all the
orders or congregations affiliated to it.” This provision
accentuated the malice of the chancellor and his worshippers.
There never have been, and are not now, any orders or congre-
gations in “ affiliation ” with the Jesuits ; the sole connection
between the sons of Loyola and the members of any other
society is that which must subsist among all the children of
the Church. But Bismarck chose to affect the crass ignor-
ance which is frequently found among Protestants, as they
unwittingly compliment the celebrated Society by an appli-
cation of the term “ Jesuit ” to every uncompromising Catli-

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 15

olic; and the event proved that when the chancellor pro-
claimed the same punishment for the Jesuits and their “ affili-
ated orders or congregations,” he prepared the way for the
banishment, at his convenience, of any religious who might
incur his displeasure.

The incidents which we have just narrated were mere pre-
ludes to the “ War for Civilization,” on which the German
enemies of the Church had already resolved, and which was
solemnly declared in May, 1873, by the promulgation of
those enactments which have rendered the name of Falk
infamous, but which are often designated as the “ May
Laws.” Some time before Bismarck entered on his great-
est enterprise, Friedeberg, a professor of law in the Univer-
sity of Leipsic, who was afterward made a privy-councillor
to Falk, had published a work entitled The German Empire
and the Catholic Church , in which he had detailed, with an
effrontery which was almost Satanic, a plan for the complete
extirpation of Catholicism in Germany, for the greater glory
of Prussia, and of free thought. Friedeberg disagreed with
the doctrinarians who thought that the power of Catholicism
could be diminished by a separation of Church and State.
On the contrary, said Friedeberg, such a separation would
be of great profit to the Church ; since in our day Catholicism
is in perfect accord with the people. Were the Church of
Rome, he added, as free from governmental surveillance in
Prussia as she is in the United States of America, her power
in Prussia would be more than doubled. Again, observed
the professor, Protestantism in Prussia would suffer greatly,
if Church and State were separated ; indeed, without the aid
of the State, Protestantism would perish in Prussia. Let the
State continue, therefore, to aid its most valuable ally in its
struggle with Catholicism. Finally, insisted Friedeberg, a
separation of Church and State in Germany would injure the
“ Old Catholics,” the men whom Prussia had encouraged to
revolt with her promises of pecuniary and other aid. Then
Friedeberg thus resumed his plan : “We have indicated our
reasons for not wishing, at the present, for a separation of
Church and State ; and we have also pointed out the path, on
which the State should enter. If, as we think, the Church

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must one day be cut away from the social body, we should
begin now to prepare for that operation, so that it will in-
jure or weaken the State as little as possible. In the mean-
time, let us put a ligature on the artery through which runs
the blood of the Church— that artery which communicates to
the Church the strength and life of the State. We should
isolate the ecclesiastical limb gradually, accustoming the
State to do without it, so that when the amputation is finally
made, the loss of the limb will not be perceived. There will
not be much blood lost, and the wound will cicatrize quick-
ly.” Such was the plan adopted by Bismarck; the Church
was to be cut away from the social body ; but the operation
-was to be performed so dexterously, that the patient should
not screech too fearfully, and the State should not receive too
serious a shock. Had the Catholic Church been an insti-
tution of the State, like Prussian Evangelical Protestantism,
with the sovereign for its supreme pontiff, then Friedeberg,
Bismarck, and Falk would have been numbered among the
“ great men ” of the world. Very little study of the “ May
Laws ” is required for the conclusion that they were well
designed for the accomplishment of the intention of Friede-
berg— “ to asphyxiate the Church, and to dry up her vital
source.” The first of these laws, enacted by the Diet of
Berlin on May 11, 1873, concerned the education of the
clergy, and the nomination to ecclesiastical offices. It or-
dered that no person could exercise ecclesiastical functions
in Prussia, unless he was a German ; unless he had been ed-
ucated according to the terms of the law ; and unless he was
perfectly acceptable to the government. The education of
all prospective priests was to be conducted by the State.
'The aspirant was to take his bachelor’s degree in a govern-
ment gymnasium ; during three years he was to study what
the State designated as theology in a German University ; and
an examination by officers of the State was to finally pro-
nounce on his fitness for the priesthood. Every ecclesiastic-
al educational establishment was to be subject, at all hours
and in every matter, to governmental surveillance. No nom-
ination to a parish or to any care of souls could be made by
.a bishop without the approbation of the civil authority.

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION. * * 17

The second law, enacted on May 12, concerned ecclesiastic-
al discipline ; and its spirit was that of the preceding or-
dinance. The Roman Pontiff could have no voice in any
matter concerning discipline in any diocese or parish of
Prussia ; for all disciplinary ecclesiastical matters were de-
clared to pertain exclusively to German ecclesiastical author-
ity, exercised with the permission of the government. And
the last appeal in all cases of ecclesiastical discipline was to
be made to a royal tribunal, sitting in Berlin ; this court was
to dismiss bishops and priests, as though they were so many
sulKprefects of the State. The third law, enacted on May
13, prohibited any ecclesiastical censure of any act command-
ed by the State. All public excommunication was absolute-
ly forbidden. The fourth law, enacted on May 14, ordered
• that when any person wished to change his religion, he
should signify that desire to the Minister of Public Worship,
who would charge him one march for a permissive license.
Our limited space forbids citations from the protests issued
by the Prussian bishops against these laws, or from the
many eloquent speeches condemning them which were pro-
nounced in the Prussian parliament by Mallinckrodt, Wind-
thorst (of Meppen), and other valiant members of the Centre.
The efforts of these champions were of no avail ; the united
forces of Protestantism, Freemasonry, “ Borrussianism,”
Judaism, and “ German intelligence,” had decided “ to crush
the infamous one,” even though their weapons constituted
a serious danger for public liberty. In a cynical discourse
"which was worthy of his school, Wirchow, one of the most
prominent representatives of materialistic “ German science,”
admitted quite cheerfully that the May Laws were “ ar-
bitrary in the extreme, and dangerous to liberty ” ; but,
he added : “ Since we need not fear that the Centre will
soon attain power, and since these arbitrary laws injure the
Catholic Church alone, we ought to adopt them.” This ad-
mission that the May Laws would injure “ the Catholic
Church alone ” is very significant ; for the reader must know
that those ordinances ostensibly affected the Protestants as
well as the Catholics. Falk had announced, however, that
4he enactments had been made to apply to Protestants “ for

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the sake of symmetry ” ; that is, that the government wished
to present the appearance of impartiality, knowing full
well that the Protestants of Prussia had been accustomed so
long to State-slavery, that it was a matter of spiall conse-
quence to them when they were loaded with a few more
chains. And two other facts must be considered. Nothing
in the Falk Laws affected the conscience of a Protestant,
even of a sincere one ; and even though the sectarian con-
science had been affected, it would have regarded as too
heavy no sacrifice which might purchase the degradation of
the Catholic Church. Some curious persons asked Falk why
it was that the Jews were not included among those affected
by his Laws ; the reply was that “ the government did not
perceive any practical necessity ” of including the children
of Abraham. Had he dared, the Minister would have as-
signed the true reason for the Jewish exemption — the pleth-
oric purses of the Jewish magnates, without whose aid the
power even of Bismarck would have vanished into thin air.

We need not insult the intelligence of the reader by any
lengthy disquisition on the absurd lie uttered by Bismarck r
when he termed his war on Catholicism a “ War for Civili-
zation.” Even a tyro in the study of history knows that m
the combat against truth and virtue, error and sin never wage
war under their own names ; that from the time of Lucifer’s
rebellion down to the exploits of the Commune of Paris,
evil has always clothed itself in the mantle of enlightenment
and progress. Even “ German science,” in which Bismarck
was an adept, is forced to admit that to the Catholic Church
alone is due the fact that the modem Germans are not now
barbarians; and that to the Catholic Church alone did the
original Prussians — a Slavic, not a Germanic tribe — owe
their liberation from the degrading idolatry to which they had
been victims for centuries after the other European bar-
barians had become civilized under the shadow of the Cross.
And truly phenomenal impudence was requisite for the asser-
tion that a state of war existed between parties, only one of
whom was armed, and with the weapons of confiscations, im-
prisonment, and exile, while the resistance of the other con-
sisted only of fidelity to God’s law, and of invincible patience*

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 19

under persecution. Some publicists have qualified the phrase
" War for Civilization” as a convenient euphemism ; but that
which it meant was a downright lie. “ In the entire course
of this affair,” observes Mgr. Janiszewski, “the government
and the pseudo-liberal party cared nothing for law, truth, or
justice ; they thought of nothing but the attainment of their
object. The means could be of any nature* since it was the
Catholic Church that was to suffer. At different periods, dif-
ferent passions and vices have dominated other passions and
vices ; the inheritance of our time is falsehood It was on
falsehood that the plan of the war of Prussia against Austria
(1866), and that of the war against France (1870), were based ;
it was falsehood that characterized the entire conspiracy
against the Church. Falsehood, systematically developed
and abundantly rewarded, took possession of the press,
and not a ray of truth was allowed to reach the people.
The German language itself was travestied. Such words as
* culture,’ ‘ instruction,* ‘ civilization,’ ‘ liberty,’ ‘ science,’

‘ Liberalism,’ ‘ Ultramontanism,’ ‘ progress,’ and other ex-
pressions which often seduce simple minds, received, in this
chaos, meanings which sound reason and logic never dreamed
of attributing to them.” It was but natural that such should
be the course of a party which brazenly avowed that it de-
spised mere principles. Thus that most “ intelligent ” Pro-
gressist, Wirchow, when told in the parliament that the May
Laws violated the Prussian Constitution, brutally retorted: “ I
care not to bother my brains in an effort to save mere principles,
since the government now abandons such things in order to
act in accordance with the desires of its party.” Mere truth
was a matter of no value to the “man of blood and iron”
who affected to scorn everything that savored of the Middle «
Age ; to the Minister who dared, on June 16, 1873, to inform the
Beichstag that he “wished to be excused from listening to any
more talk about the pretended rights of the people — meret
reminiscences of days long vanished, and which merit no other-
designation than that of declamatory phrases.”

On Jan. 19, 1874, Falk asked the Prussian Diet to pass
three additional draconian enactments. It had become evi-
dent that the imprisonment or exile of all the Catholic bish-

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ops would soon render the Catholic dioceses vacant in the
eyes of the Prussian government ;.and that only the apostate,
Reinkens, would be recognized by His Imperial and Royal Ma-
jesty as a Catholic bishop. It was necessary, therefore, to
provide for the administration of the prospectively vacant
sees. The second law was a complement of that of May 11,
1873, which prescribed the method and nature of the education
of the clergy, and also regulated all appointments to the care
of souls. The third law concerned the banishment of the re-
calcitrant clergy ; and this measure was to be voted not only
by the Prussian Chambers, but also by the German parliament
— a proceeding which would make it a law of the German
Empire. The representative of Bismarck informed the Cham-
bers that the object of this third law was to crush the opposi-
tion of the Catholic clergy to the May Laws ; to “ prevent any
illegal exercise of ecclesiastical functions ” ; that is, to prevent
any bishops from performing any duties pertaining peculiarly
to their office, and to prevent all priests from saying Mass, hear-
ing confessions, or preaching, without the express permis-
sion of His Sacred Majesty’s officers. This law was passed on
May 4th. Every ecclesiastic who had already been “ dis-
missed ” because of a violation of the May Laws, or who
would thereafter be “ dismissed,” would be punished, by

internment,” or by “ externment,” or by banishment, if he
dared to officiate in any manner. The “interned” were
transported to some place which the police designated ;
frequently to some fortress, as in the case of the bishop
of Paderborn, who was “ interned” in the fortress ofWesel.
^“Externment” signified expulsion from certain provinces.
Thus, the valiant Polander, Mgr. Ledochowski, archbishop
-of Posen and Gnesen, besides two years of imprisonment,
suffered exclusion from Posen and Silesia. Banishment
• entailed the loss of all civic rights. Mgr. Melchers, arch-
bishop of Cologne, was imprisoned with a horde of rob-
bers and cut-throats for six months, and then he was
exiled (1). Mgr. Eberhardt, bishop of Treves, died in

(1) When M^r. Melchers, on his entrance into his prison, was asked to give his name
and occupation, he naturally replied : “ Paul Melchers, archbishop of Cologne.'' The
governor retorted : “You were an archbishop at one time ; but the government has de-
prived you of that title.’’ Then the prelate replied : “ The government cannot take from

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THE BI8MARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 21

jail. The Polish prelate, Mgr. Janiszewski, auxiliary-bishop
of Posen and Gnesen, was successively fined, interned,,
imprisoned, and exiled. Another Pole, Mgr. Cybichowski,
auxiliary of Gnesen, merely for having presumed to conse-
crate the Holy Oils without the permission of the govern-
ment, was imprisoned for nine months, and then he was de-
ported to Silesia. On May 20th, the parliament passed the
law which Bismarck and his imperial master (or pupil}
deemed capable of checking the audacity of those who re-
garded the “ dismissed ” bishops and pastors as still endowed
with spiritual jurisdiction. The Cathedral Chapters were
ordered, in case “ dismissal ” had left their dioceses with-
out bishops, to name administrators within ten days ; if the*
Chapters refused to name such administrators, the govern-
ment would appoint commissioners who would take the place
of the bishops . Where parishes were vacant, the parishioners
were to elect their new pastors. It is interesting to note
that while very many of the so-called “ conservative ” Protest-
ants openly disapproved of the laws of May 4th and May 20th,.
1874, they nevertheless voted for them. One of their leaders*
Minnigerode, did not hesitate to avow : “ In spite of grave
doubts and grave scruples, I cannot allow the Prussian
government to be defeated by the Ultramontanes. In
spite of the perplexities of my conscience, I shall vote for
the law, in order to help the government.” Another prom-
inent “ conservative ” Protestant, Miquel, said : “We can-
not leave the Prussian government in an embarrassed
condition; we are obliged to aid it.” These avowals of
the least rampant of the German Protestant represen-
tatives are certainly eloquent ; but if there was any need
of demonstrating more forcibly that in the* “ War for
Civilization,” justice counted for nothing, and that ser-
vility to the State was the dominant trait of such of the*
German Protestants as still retained some faith in Chris-
tianity, the following words of Wellel Yehlingsdorf should

me a power which It did not give to me ; but If my title of archblsbao does not satisfy you, I
hare another profession.”— ” What Is it ? ” asked the officer. “ 1 am good at plaiting '

straw,” was the answer. The name of “ Paul Helcbers, straw-plaiter,” was then entered
on the register ; and while he was Incarcerated, the plaiting of straw was the. arch-*
bisbop’s task. Bazin ; loc. cit., p. 110.

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have sufficed •: “ Those who voted for the May Laws must
now bear the humiliating consequences. They must recon-
cile themselves to this double-edged sword, with which the
government is armed ; they must even try to sharpen it, in
order to save the honor of the State. It is now too late to
discuss as to what will be the denouement of this combat ;
but one thing remains — to uphold the government. ... I
feel the sorrowful conviction that, as things are now, the
most direct path toward domestic peace is a determination
of all parties to rally around the State, and to support it,
independently of their convictions” Then addressing the
Centre, the champion of inconsistency said : “ We assure you
that we have firmly resolved never to go to Canossa (1) ; and
that we shall continue the battle with more energy, in order
to end it more quickly.”

In 1875 five new laws were enacted for the further en-
slavement of the Church : one regulating the administra-
tion of ecclesiastical revenues ; one suppressing all the allow-
ances made by the State to bishops ; one assigning a part
of the revenues of the Catholic Church to the “ Old Cath-
olics ” ; one against convents and religious congregations ;
and one suppressing the paragraphs in the Prussian Con-
stitution which guaranteed religious liberty to Catholics.
Truly, the time seemed to have arrived for the performance
•of the operation foreseen by Friedeberg — the “ amputation
of the Church from the social body.” By the first law it
was enacted that the revenues of each parish were to be ad-
ministered by a body of laymen who were to be chosen by
the parishioners. The pastor was to have no voice, either
in the election of the administrators, or in their debates. In
the case of Catholic parishes, the bishop was to have a nom-
inal direction ; but he was always to refer his decisions to
the prefect of the province, and that officer could reverse
those decisions without appeal. A radical difference was
established between the Catholic method of election of ad-
ministrators, and that of the Protestants. No Protestant
could vote until he was twenty-four years old ; a Catholic
could vote when he was twenty-one. Again, care was taken

a) For the meaning of this phrase, see our Vol. li., p. 160.

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION. * * 23

that only the better elements in a Protestant parish should
control the funds ; no one could be an elector who led an
irregular life, who did not fulfil his religious duties, or who
gave any scandal to his fellows. The contrary provision
was made for the Catholic parishes ; every adult male, even
the most dissolute and irreligious, providing that he bore
the name of Catholic, was to be an elector. This fact alone
showed that the Prussian government had determined to ex-
cite discord between the Catholic clergy and their flocks —
“ Inimicm homo hoc fecit” When the time arrived for the
signing of the second law, the one withdrawing the subven-
tions hitherto accorded to the clergy and religious corpor-
ations by the State, the emperor hesitated ; but the insist-
ence of the chancellor prevailed. The iniquity of this en-
actment will be comprehended only by him who reflects that
the abolished subvention had never been a donation from
the- State to the Church ; it was simply a miserable apology
for a partial restitution, by means of a petty interest (less
than one per cent.), of the property which the Protestants
had stolen from the Church — a method like that adopted
for the same reason in France, Spain, and certain Latin-
American countries where the Brethren of the Three Points
have robbed the Church of all her immovable property, and
of all the movable that was attainable (1). Let the reader,

(1) When Archbishop Ledochowski was notified, four months after the adoption of the
May Laws, that bis usual revenue from the State would not be paid to him until he had
appointed to the parish of Vlelen a pastor whom the government would find acceptable, the
prelate sent this protest to the president of the province : 44 1 protest against the aforesaid
ordinance, for the reason that the endowment of the archbishopric of Gnesen-Posen is
based on a treaty concluded with the State, and is merely a partial compensation for the
Church property which the State has appropriated. In proof of this it may suffice to
refer you to the declaration made by Ladenberg. then Minister of Public Worship, in his
explanations of the Prussian Constitution of Dec. 15, 1848. All the provinces acquired by
the State in later times (during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) received solemu
guarantees regarding the support of their ecclesiastical establishments; as you may see in
the proclamation addressed, on May 15, 1857, to the Inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of
Posen (Collection of Laws , p. 45). Hence it was that during the negotiations with the Apos-
tolic See for a new arrangement of the relations between Church and State, these endow-
ments were not regarded as favors, but us obligatory payments of fuily acknowledged
debt*,. -ILwas-because of this* indebted ness that no State took upon Itself the duty of endow-
ing the bishoprics ; and it declared that such was the Church's title, not only during the
aforesaid negotiations, but afterward, at the time of the publication of the Concordat of
1821 (Official Prussian Gazette , Aug. 11,1831). The State is obliged to pay this debt,
and promptly ; for such payment is demanded by the dictates of strict Justice, and by the
respect due to the State’s own honor. Therefore I reserve to myself the right of taking

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however, note carefully that this law, by which the Ger-
man emperor sanctioned a robbery as contemptible as it
was imprudent, was enforced with one exception. Any
ecclesiastic who would record a written oath to the effect
that he would obey all the laws of the State, and who
would thus avow implicitly that he was ready to form
part of a German National Church, was to receive the
subvention hitherto accruing to the holder of his bene-
fice. Fortunately there were very few of the German clergy,
and none among the bishops, who bartered their ecclesias-
tical independence, and pronounced themselves "willing to
plunge into schism, for the sake of the mess of pottage
tendered by the “ loyal and pious ” emperor. In Silesia es-
pecially the clergy spurned the governmental bribe ; out of
1,200 priests, only five accepted it. But faithful above all
others were the priests of the Polish provinces of Prussia ;
out of 800 clergymen in the archdiocese of Posen, only two
were derelict. The third law ordained that when there were
any “ Old Catholics ” in a parish, they should enjoy all the
ecclesiastical revenues, and should have the same rights as
the Catholics to the churches, sacred vessels, cemeteries, etc.
If there were two churches in a parish, the omnipotent pre-
fect was to leave one to the Catholic pastor, and give the
other to the schismatics ; if there was only one church, the
royal officer was to determine the hours for the u Old Cath-
olic ” services. In case there should prove to be “ a large
number ” of schismatics in a parish, the prefect was to give
to them the entire control of religious matters ; and of course
the same prefect was to determine the meaning of “ a large
number. ” The police were instructed to enforce all decisions
of the prefect without delay. The fourth law declared that
“ all Catholic convents and religious congregations were pro-
hibited in all the dominions of the Prussian monarchy.”
Six months were accorded to all monks, friars, nuns, etc.y
for their dispersion ; but in the case of teaching orders, the
Minister of Public Worship was allowed to defer their expul-
sion from their institutions for four years, if he could not im-

the proper measures, at the proper time, for the recovery of the sums that are due to raer
as archbishop of Gnesen- Posen.”

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mediately find proper substitutes for them. An exception was-
made for the Sisters of Charity who were engaged in the ser-
vice of the sick. They were allowed to remain in their hos-
pitals ; but it was stated that at any time a simple royal decree
might expel them also, and that in the meantime they were to
be constantly under police surveillance — a measure which in-
dicated that Bismarck placed these devoted religious on the
same level with the women of the street. These four laws-
of 1875 should have contented the most ardent defenders*
of “ German civilization ” ; certainly such enactments ought
to have promised what Friedeberg termed “ the asphyxiation
of the Church.” But there remained the task of crowning
the edifice which “ German intelligence ” had so cunningly
erected. The Articles XV., XVT. , and XVIII. of the Prussian
Constitution of 1850, which guaranteed a just autonomy to-
both Protestants and to Catholics, were to be suppressed. In
reality, this action of the persecutors signified but little ; al-
ready, at the time of the passage of the May Laws, the Articles
in question had been so modified, that they were rendered ab-
solutely nugatory (1) — so nugatory, that Prof. Gneist, one of
the most fanatical admirers of Bismarck, exclaimed : “ These
new Laws ought to be regarded as the Decalogue of the
Prussians. ” It was thought to be prudent, however, to leave
to the Catholics no possibility of an interpretation of the writ-
ten law of Prussia in their favor ; and the conciliatory Ar-
ticles disappeared from the Constitution. Religious liberty
had been unknown in Prussia since the promulgation of the
May Laws; and by their abolition of the Articles which
proclaimed it, the members of the parliamentary majority
showed that they were not yet lost to every sense of shame^
At the opening of the parliamentary session of 1874, the
“ pious and loyal ” William L gave utterance to this sage
observation : “ The May Laws have not at all paralyzed re-
ligious sentiment ; therefore the resistance of the bishops is

(1) As accepted, under oath, by Frederick William III. In 1850, Article XVIII. wns as fol-
lows : “ The right of nomination, of presentation, of choice, and of confirmation for ecclesias-
tical offices, so far as they are made to belong to the State, and to be based on patronage or
other legal titles, is suppressed.” The tinkering of 1873 preserved these words intact ; but
these were added : “ Nevertheless , the laics of the State regulate the course to he pur-
sued in regard to education , the nomination to offices, and dism issal of ecclesiastics and
of pastors ; and they fix the limits of disciplinary authority.”

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unjustifiable.” Reichensperger thus replied to the imperial
sophist : “ In order to save the honor of the government, I
am willing to believe that it is convinced on this point.
But such a justification of these laws is dangerous, nay, it is
monstrous ; for the government thereby arrogates to itself
the rights of a supreme judge in matters of religion. It de-
cides as to what constitutes a religious life, and as to what
menaces that life ; and by its decision it finds itself contradict-
ed by all the bishops and by all the members of the Catholic
Church. . . . Do you not perceive that Christianity is deprived
of the right of existence, when the laws say that the Gospel
cannot be preached without the permission of the civil au-
thority ; that no Sacraments can be administered without
the consent of the president (of the province) ? If the law
says that no religious function can be performed without
^he permission of the president, I fail to understand how
you can doubt that the law denies the existence of the
Church, and places the secular power in her place. No Chris-
tian doubts that the Catholic Church received her mission
from her Divine Founder; from Him who brought Chris-
tianity into the world without the consent, and even in spite
•of the prohibition of the Jewish Sanhedrin, of King Herod,
and of Pilate ; from Him who commanded His Apostles to
preach the Gospel throughout the world, without regard to
the threats of men, even amid persecutions and even unto
martyrdom, and to preach it until the end of time ( Cries of
“ Oh ! oh ! ” from the Left), Reflect, gentlemen, if only
for a moment, on this idea which seems so extraordin-
ary to you. As for me, I am firmly convinced that these
laws can receive the votes of only those who deny the di-
vine mission of the Church, and of Christianity in general.
They who recognize this mission must respect it, and not aid
the usurpations of the secular power in preventing its ac-
complishment ; but if the contrary be the case, let them
avow openly : * We are no longer Christians.’ ” The reader
will not expect us to cite at length any of the powerful dis-
courses with which the Catholic orators of the Centre de-
fended the Catholic cause in the parliament, although some
of those discourses, especially those of Mallinckrodt, some-

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION. * * 27

times remind us of those of Berryer, Montalembert, Falloux,
and Dupanloup. We shall give merely an extract from one
of the speeches of Mallinckrodt, and one from a discourse by
Windthorst During the discussion of the law on the banish-
ment of the clergy, Mallinckrodt thus addressed the Reichs-
tag : “ If it is true that we betray our country because we
ding firmly to the centre of Catholic unity, then it must be
said that our ancestors, and yours also, denied their country,
even from the days of St Boniface. You say that the May
Laws ought to be enforced, because they exist ; but I insist *
that the May Laws ought to be abrogated, because they are
useless. Which argument is the more conclusive ? I hold
that the existence of these laws proves nothing ; their mean-
ing should be investigated You believed that your combat

would be waged merely against the bishops, and against
Rged and feeble men ; you thought that the priests would
rush, en masse , into your camp. Y(^ur calculations deceived
you ; experience has shown that the clergy are firmly united
with their superiors. You thought that it was only with
ecclesiastics that you would be obliged to contend; but
whoever has eyes, and is willing to use them, sees that you
must deal also with the laity. In our Western provinces
you behold that firm determination, that attentive calm,
with which, at the first sign, the masses rushed to the doors
of the prisons, in order to bid farewell to their pastors, and
to assure them that so long as the pastoral crozier remains
in their hands, even should the time come when the machin-
ations of our government would deprive the faithful of all
pastoral succor, the bishops may count on the persevering
fidelity of the Catholic people to Holy Church. Gentlemen,
if you have occasion to witness these facts, I think that you
will begin to understand that this matter is not a strife with
particular individuals, but a combat between two funda-
mental principles — between the Catholic Religion and a
philosophy which is without a Christian foundation. The
openly avowed opposition of Prince Bismarck, so strik-
ingly displayed during this struggle, may be very power-
ful ; but it is merely a transient phenomenon. Undoubt-
edly, Bismarck is a powerful personage ; but in face of this

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war of principles, lie is weak as a reed. If you wish, gentle-
men, to attain your object by this miserable law of banish-
ment, your calculations are false ', and you simply prove
that you know nothing concerning the force of Christian
convictions. It is a remarkable fact that suffering engen-
ders a desire to suffer ; when we see our pastors persecuted,,
imprisoned, exiled, do you think that we will be wanting in
the courage to share their lot ? You will be obliged to
employ more trenchant weapons ; but reflect well as to-
’ the choice of those weapons. In the meantime, we shall
meditate on the immortal motto : ‘ Per crucem ad Ivcem.' ”
On the same occasion, Windthorst thus reproved Falk and
the Bismarckian majority in the parliament : “ What danger-
menaces the State, if a priest celebrates Mass, or performs *
any other one of his functions — if, on the field of battle,,
or during an epidemic, the priest assists a dying man, con-
soling him, and aiding him as he passes into eternity ?'

. . . Do you wish to decree absolutely that no person can
receive the Sacraments, unless he receives them in the-
manner which may seem proper to each and every suc-
cessive Minister? We are told that the performance of re-
ligious duties is free ; but I can see no liberty in the im-
prisonment of the clergy, when they exercise religious func-
tions which do not concern the State. You say, gentlemen,,
that you desire peace ; but do you conscientiously believe
that peace can be obtained by the means which you pro-
pose ? I can assure you that in spite of what the Minister
terms the keenness of his weapons, you will not attain your
object ; for Catholics and believing Protestants are con-
vinced that no sacrifice, not even that of life, is too great for
the attainment of religious freedom. . . . You have the power
to torment us, to render our condition miserable indeed ; you
can wound our hearts ; but you cannot take from us our
faith. If you close all our churches, we will assemble in
the forests, as the Catholics of France were wont to assemble,,
during the rule of the Jacobins.” The address which closed
the discussion on the part of the Catholic champions was*
delivered by a Polish deputy, the Abbe Bespadek. Even since
the treaties of 1815, in spite of those treaties, and in spite oi

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 29

the words of the royal Hohenzollern, the Prussian govern-
ment had ever continued that oppression of its Polish sub-
jects which it had initiated at the time of the first partition —
an oppression which could not fail to justify the old Polish
proverb : “ So long as the sun warms the earth, the Pole will
never be a brother to the German.” The world was not sur-
prised, therefore, when it perceived that the persecution accom-
panying the “War for Civilization’* had fallen on the Duchy of
Posen with a severity much greater than that with which Bis-
marck afflicted the Catholics of any other province. It was the
heart of a Catholic, of a priest, and of a Pole, that spoke in
these words of Respadek : “ Gentlemen, we have lost a very
great portion of what constitutes the happiness of a nation.
But three treasures have remained to us intact ; a love of
truth, our national honor, and our fidelity to our altars.
These treasures, gentlemen, cannot be taken from us, either
by the threats of the powers above us, or by the temptations
of the powers beneath us. We submit humbly to the decrees
of Providence ; we submit to the laws of human justice ; but
you need not ask us to submit to a power that does not re-
spect our consciences. If you wish to realize the truth of
what I say, look at Cell No. 25 in the prison of Ostrowa (1) ;
look at the fifty priests who are imprisoned or exiled, and the
many others who are reduced to misery ; and then remember
well that among us there are hundreds of others who will un-
dergo the same fate, if this persecution continues. Gentle-
men, you may persecute a nation which preserves its faith ;
but you cannot dishonor it. You may thrust into prison a
bishop who is armed only with the Gospel ; you may con-
demn him by your law's ; but you cannot conquer him.”

Now for a brief account of the manner in which the May
Laws were enforced. The first act of violence, after the
expulsion of the Jesuits, was the closing of the seminaries,
firstly, in Posen, and afterward in the diocese of Paderborn,
and in others. In Posen, the Prussian government had not
waited for the May Laws in order to make a radical attack
on the religion of its Polish subjects. Many years previous-
ly, it had violated the treaty of partition aijd subsequent com-

Tbe cell occupied by Archbishop Ledocbowski.

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pacts by prohibiting the Polish language in the schools and
in the courts of justice ; but it had allowed religious instruc-
tion to be given in their mother-tongue to little children.
Shortly after the beginning of the “War for Civilization,”
however, it had revoked this “ concession and when Mgr.
Ledochowski, surmising that the emperor had not realized
the baneful effects of the revocation, memorialized His Majesty,
the “ pious and loyal ” William declared that the decree was
of his own conception. Then the prelate caused the lambs
of his flock to be assembled, outside of school hours, and in
special localities, for the usual catechetical instruction ; but
the police broke up the classes. Then the children were
taken into the churches ; but the catechists were fined,
and the parents were informed that if their children were
taught the Catechism in Polish, they would be dismissed
from the schools. When the May Laws had been adopted,
the seminary of Posen was closed, because the archbishop
would not allow the president of the province to arrange its
course of studies “ according to the spirit of the law,” as
the officer told the archbishop in his letter of Aug. 21. In
the diocese of Munster, the preparatory seminary of Gaes-
donk was closed ; in the diocese of Culm, that of Peplin ; and
the same fate overtook all the Catholic boarding-schools in
Paderborn, Treves, Munster, Breslau, Bonn, and Posen. The
next victims of the May Laws were the female religious. In
Posen, the religious of the Sacred Heart had been suppressed
before the publication of the law against convents ; nor was
the governmental action incomprehensible in this instance,,
since the authorities chose to consider these Sisters as
“ affiliated ” to the terrible Jesuits. But what crime had the
cloistered Carmelite nuns committed ? In spite of the univer-
sally admitted fact that these religious held no communication
with the outside world, they also were exiled. At Osieczna, in
Posen, theOratorianshada “House of Retreat,” whither the
archbishop was wont to send those of his clergy who needed to
devote some time to penance and serious meditation. The
president of the province summoned Father Brezinski, the su-
perior of this establishment, to furnish him with a copy of the*
rule of the house. Brezinski replied that he would consult the*

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 31-

archbishop ; and for this “ crime,” he was fined 100 thalers.
As there was not so much money in the house, the officers lev-
ied on four pigs ; and when it was found that the animals did
not belong to the culprit, his room was searched for some
portable property of value, and about ten thalers’ worth of
clothes were confiscated for the benefit of the imperial-royal
treasury. Then the priests who were in retreat, four in
number, were interrogated as to the reason for their “ im-
prisonment ” ; and they were told that they were free. Only
one consented to depart without the permission of his ordinary.
Of course a legislation so elastic as that which bore the*
name of Falk, one that pretended to give to a governmental
agent the power to dispense ecclesiastics from a performance
of the canonical penances imposed by their bishops, arrogat-
ed to itself the right of fining and imprisoning bishops ad
libitum . Quite consistently, therefore, in Article XY. of the
law of May 11, it was decreed that no ecclesiastical superior
could make any appointment without the approbation of the
provincial p^esideQt ; and that any violation of this provision
should be punished by a fine of from 200 to 1,000 thalers, or
by a “ corresponding length of imprisonment.” The Article
XYIIL of the same law prohibited a bishop from allowing
an ecclesiastical office to remain vacant for more than one
year ; this “ crime ” was to be punished by a fine of 1,000 tha-
lers, and the fine could be repeated ad infinitum , until the
vacancy was filled. In the course of a few months, the
archbishop of Posen was condemned to pay fines to the
amount of 30,000 thalers ; and as he did not possess such a
sum, his horses were seized, then his carriage, then his-
furniture, and when an official declaration showed that his*
person alone was then seizable, he was incarcerated. The
lot of a priest, unless he preferred apostasy, was as painful
as that of a bishop ; his “punishment ” was generally aggra-
vated by the malice of the police and of his jailers. Thus,
when the pastor, Grokowski, and two other priests were im-
prisoned, care was taken to give each one of them a Jew as his
cell-mate. Seldom, indeed, were the confessors allowed to
purchase, with their own money or with that which the
pitying faithful sent to them, better food than that furnished

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by the prison authorities, even though they were sick almost
unto death ; and in many instances, meat was given to
them only on Friday, when, of course, they would not eat it.
We have alluded already to the imprisonment of the arch-
bishop of Cologne, and of the bishops of Paderborn, Treves,
and Munster. In some places, even women and children
were the victims of the May Laws. Thus, in Munster, when
the ladies of the diocese sent a dutiful address to their per-
secuted bishop, each signer was arrested and fined. In Po-
sen, on several occasions the police arrested children who, by
command of their parents, had gone to the cathedral to be ex-
amined in religion by the archbishop. We have noted that
the Prussian government called upon every Chapter to elect
an administrator, in the case of a “dismissal ” of the bishop.
Without exception, the Chapters of all the afflicted dioceses
refused to obey ; and the governmental commissaries were
avoided as though they were lepers. Each imprisoned pre-
late had appointed a delegate, who was known only by the
priests ; and in no case were the efforts of the .government
successful, although it adopted every means to discover the
identity of the bishop’s representative. In Posen, 40 deans
were examined on this point ; and when it was found that
none of them would betray the secret, 36 were incarcerated.
Tn some places, the government installed pastors of its own
choice in the churches ; but the people would not accept
the ministrations of these unfortunates. Thus, when the im-
perial commissary summoned the Catholics of Yielen, in
Posen, to the church, in order to announce to them that
4he acts performed by a priest not acceptable to the govern-
ment were “ null and void, ” out of 3,300 parishioners, only
four attended, and two of these were functionaries of the
'State. In the parishes of Krobia and Buk, not one Cath-
olic appeared before the commissary. In fact, there was
not a parish in Prussian Poland, into which an apostate
priest had been intruded by the government of the “ pious
and loyal ” William L, which did not afford the spectacle of
a shepherd without a flock. The excommunicated renegade
was in possession of the parish church ; but at his Mass not
.a person attended, and he was never asked to baptize, to offi-

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION. ’ * 33

ciate at a marriage, or to pray for the dead. The Catholic
world, therefore, was not surprised when, on Nov. 24, 1873,
the president-in-chief of Posen, by command of the Cabinet
of Berlin, ordered Archbishop Ledochowski to resign his
diocese. “ The example of such resistance and disobedience
has led his clergy to perpetrate the same crimes,” declared
the Prussian official ; “ marriages are blessed by ecclesias-
tics who perform the offices of the Church illegally, and the
government can no longer tolerate such confusion. In the
interests of public order, the government cannot allow this
archbishop to occupy a position, in which he exercises an
influence prejudicial to the State.” The reply of Ledo-
chowski to this impudent assumption was worthy of Poland
and of the prelate (1); and we shall quote some of its more
prominent passages : “ From the day when the government
declared war on the Catholic faith in all the regions sub-
ject to the sceptre of His Majesty, I have frequently been
forced to believe that the present officers of the State have
no knowledge of the holy faith which we profess, and that
they are incapable of understanding the duties which that
faith imposes on us. It is precisely because of this ignor-
ance that the president-in-chief orders me, in the aforesaid
proclamation, to lay aside my archiepiscopal dignity ; and
he threatens that if I do not comply with his order within
eight days, the secular tribunal of Berlin will pronounce my
deposition. My episcopal office, together with its duties
and its rights, has been given to me by God, through the
hands of His vicar on earth No secular power can abro-
gate my mission As for a voluntary resignation of my

archbishopric of Gnesen-Posen, undoubtedly such a proceed-
ing could take place in certain circumstances, if the con-
sent of our Holy Father were accorded ; but I believe that
the government knows me too well to suppose that I would
be guilty of such a deed in the present condition of things.
I would be unworthy of the spiritual dignity which God
has conferred on me, were I to abandon my flock willingly,
at the very moment when it is in danger of becoming the

'!) See the article by Count Tarnowski, entitled The Prussian Government and Arch-
bishop LedochowskU in the Polish Review for Aug., 1874.

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prey of incredulity, heresy, and schism. ... You mention,
Mr. President-in-chief, certain of the principal acts of my
pastoral ministry, and you adduce them as justifying the
demand you have made. I would never have dared to enu-
merate these proofs of my conscientiousness in the fulfilment
of my episcopal obligations ; they are the fruit of the grace
of God, which aids man in the accomplishment of the most
difficult duties. You render the same testimony to the mer-
its of my clergy, and of the people confided to my paternal
care ; and this testimony, recorded in your official publication,
will cause the entire world to honor my priests and the faith-
ful of my two archdioceses. Only two of my priests denied
the faith, and perhaps they did not know what they did ;
and among the laity, are there many more who have per-
jured themselves before God and His Church ? . . . The presi-
dent-in-chief makes a great mistake when he thinks that
the invincible constancy of my clergy and people in uphold-
ing the principles of Catholic truth, and their persever-
ance in duty amid the horrors of persecution, are my work,
the result of my influence and authority. No, sir ; they are
the fruit of divine mercy and grace.” On Feb. 4, 1874,
Mgr. Ledochowski was confined in the prison of Ostrowa,
where he was treated with the utmost rigor. On March 15,
1875, Pope Pius IX. evinced his admiration of the heroic
confessor by raising him to the Sacred College. On April
15, he was dismissed from prison, but was ordered to leave
the empire. He then fixed his residence in Cracow ; but the
demonstrations of the Austrian Poles in his honor fright-
ened the Cabinet of Vienna, then very anxious to please Prus-
sia, and he was requested to leave Galicia. Proceeding to
Rome, he continued to direct the affairs of his diocese ; and
during several years Bismarck caused him to be condemned
again and again to imprisonment in contumaciam . It was
said that the chancellor impudently attempted to procure
his extradition from the usurper in the Quirinal ;but if that
move was made, Pius IX. checkmated it by lodging His Emi-
nence in the Vatican, where he found safety until 1884,
when Pope Leo XIII. prevailed upon him to resign his
archdiocese, and to become the papal Secretary of Me-

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 35 *

morials. In 1892 he was made Prefect of the Propaganda.

The weapon on which Bismarck had chiefly relied for his
combat with the Church — a weapon which, although untried,
was apparently trusty — and which promise^ more of success
than he could hope to attain by his more vulgar arms of starva-
tion or imprisonment, was “ Old Catholicism.” The school
of Munich, the result of the marriage of “ German science ”
and ecclesiastical insubordination, had told him that the pro-
clamation of the dogma of Papal Infallibility would be the
signal for a revolt against Rome on the part of the majority of
the German clergy ; and that in all probability, his most
difficult task would be the selection, from among so many
available candidates, of a primate for that grandest con-
ception of “German intelligence,” a German National Church.

But “ Old Catholicism ” disappointed the sanguine chancel-
lor ; when he examined its microscopic proportions, probably
he wondered that such an abortion ever came into existence.
But the war on the Catholic Church was in full career ; and
it w’as not for the chief exponent of “ Borrussianism ” to be
the first to weaken. So thought the “ man of blood and
iron ” for several years ; “ he would never go to Canossa ,” al-
though some of the best specimens of “ German intelligence,”
men of his own party, insisted, in the sixth year of the
struggle, that the true interests of the fatherland called on him
to make peace with the Queen of the Seven Hills. Even the
Gazette of the Cross , which had so complacently announced
the first signs of the foolish contest, did not hesitate to sav*
on Aug. 11, 1878 : “ It is because of the ‘ War for Civiliza-
tion ’ that every kind of moral and material misery is seen
in every corner of the German Empire. It is only by aban-
doning the ‘ War for Civilization,’ and by abandoning the ideas,
that caused it, that we can escape from our embarrassments..
Such is our opinion ; it is becoming more general every day ;;
and where there is a will, there is a way.” The Gazette.
was a Protestant journal ; but at that time, nearly aH tlie*
German Protestants who retained any belief in Protestantism,,
all who were not freethinkers, called on Bismarck, in the
name of Protestantism itself, to retrace the steps he had
taken in this lamentable path. The combat had caused far

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more damage to Protestantism than to Catholicism. The
Protestants had gladly acclaimed the law which rendered
civil marriage obligatory and sufficient, because they thought
that the infamous enactment would affect the Catholics more
severely than it hurt themselves. But while statistics did
not show any decrease of religious marriages among Catholics
since the beginning of the persecution, at least half of the
unions among Protestants had been conducted in Pagan
fashion. In the Protestant Synod of Essen, held in 1877,
Schultz, a superintendent-general, made this lamentable avow-
al : “ In the province of Saxony, there is not a town of any
considerable size, in which from forty to fifty per cent, of
the marriages have not been contracted without the blessing of
the (Protestant) Church. In one manufacturing city of 18,000
inhabitants, out of the 150 marriages, only 13 were blessed
by the (Protestant) Church, and these would not have been
so blessed, had not the parents exerted all their author-
ity, and had not the ministers made many sacrifices to
gain their point. ” The Protestants had also rejoiced when
the Bismarckian legislation declared that Christian parents
should no longer be obliged to procure the baptism of their
children. In the fifth year of the persecution, the statistics
showed that every child of Catholic parents had been bap-
tized ; but among the Protestants, only one in three had been
baptized in Berlin and in Koenigsberg, and only one in five
in the provinces (1). When this result of the May Laws
became known, the government ordered all its military and
-civil officers, under pain of dismissal, to contract their mar-
riages before some minister of religion, and to procure the
baptism of their children. Does history furnish an in-
stance of governmental self-stultification analogous to this
decree of the champion of “ German intelligence ” ? A law
for the entire kingdom is promulgated ; and after a long
experience of its effects, Bismarck finds that it is so wicked
and absurd that he must fain order all of the employees of
the State, an enormous number in Germany, to ignore it.
Common sense would have dictated the abrogation of the in-
iquitous law ; but its maker could not “ go to Canossa.”

/I) Janiszewski ; loc. cif., p. 417.

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 37

Meanwhile, atheism congratulated itself on its foresight in
having supported the mighty chancellor ; and the Catholics
found consolation in the hope that 44 God had permitted the
persecution for the decomposition of Protestantism, and in
order to lead believing Protestants into the true Church ” (1).
Much, however, as Bismarck detested Catholicism, he did
not love Protestantism sufficiently well to prevent its dissolu-
tion by following a course which, as he fancied, would pre-
vent the consolidation of the German Empire, then so en-
ergetically pressed by Socialism. The usually perspicacious
statesman did not perceive that his policy tended, by more
ways than one, to the end which the Socialists had in view ;
that Socialism is perfectly logical, if the principles of Lib-
eralism, as Bismarck understood it, are well founded. 44 Lib-
eralism,” said Mgr. Ketteler, “ makes of the State a God
here present ; and nevertheless it talks about Religion and
the Church. That is sheer nonsense. Socialism cries out :
4 If the State is God, the historical development of the Chris-
tian religion is an immense fraud. I, Socialism, wish to
hear no more talk about religion, Church, or worship.’ Lib-
eralism wishes to deprive marriage of its religious character ;
and nevertheless it tries to preserve it under the form of a
civil union. Again Socialism cries out : 4 If God has not
regulated marriage, we want no regulations by men ; our
wills are our law ; our passions constitute our right, and let
no man interfere with them ! ’ Liberalism says : 4 The law of
the State is absolute ; the Church, the family, the father,
have no rights other than those which the State grants to
them through its legislative bodies. As for property, how-
ever, that is inviolable.’ But Socialism retorts : 4 Nonsense !
If the State is the sole source of right and of law, it is also the
source of property. We call for a revision of the laws on
property and on inheritance Away with all your econ-

omical principles which tend to concentrate wealth in the
hands of the few ! * ”(2). Shortly after Bismarck had entered
on his disgraceful campaign, the Socialists held a Congress
at Ghent. One of the leaders, Liebnecht, made this obser-

(1) Our Present Duties, by Mgr. Conrad Martin, Bishop of Paderborn. Paris, 1878.

(2) The War for Civilization , p. 11-15.

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vation:“The Ultramontanes have more influence than we
have over the minds of the people ; but now the parliament
has delivered us from that enemy.” And another leader,
Bebel, declared : “ The Ultramontanes are our mortal en-
emies.” Bismarck, however, began his war on Socialism
by attempting to exterminate these mortal enemies of the
pest ; and he ought not to have been surprised, when, having
urged the Centre to vote for the law against Socialism, he
heard from Windthorst : “ How can we extinguish the fire,
when you are continually nourishing it ? ”

From what we have said concerning the May Laws, the
reader will readily understand that any concession on the part
of the Holy See was impossible ; and that since the German
chancellor refused to abandon any of his arrogant and absurd
pretensions, the “War for Civilization” seemed destined
to last until the disintegrating forces of Socialism would
have destroyed the power which knew not how to avail
itself of its sole means of salvation. But an unexpected
circumstance showed both parties to the struggle that peace
Tnight not be far distant. On May 13, 1878, a Socialistic
workman, one Hoedel or Lehmann, attempted the life of
William I. The aim of the miscreant was not true ; but
the shock produced a deep impression on the mind of the
monarch, and he remarked to the author of the May Laws
that probably the contemplated crime was due to the fact that
the people had been robbed of their religion. A few weeks
afterward, on June 2, another Socialist, a certain Dr. Nobil-
ing, made a second attack on the emperor-king, wounding
him seriously in the face and arm, and forcinghim toTelinquish
the reins of government, for a time, to the crown-prince.
This second danger augmented the imperial disgust with
the “ War for Civilization ” ; and the feeling became predom-
inant, when, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Ger-
mania monument at Niederwald on the Rhine, it was dis-
covered that a mine had been prepared for the destruction
of the entire imperial family. If we add to these facts the
revelation made at the recent elections, that Berlin alone
counted 56,133 resolute partisans of Liebnecht and Bebel,
we will comprehend the significance of the many invitations

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THE BISMARCKIAN SO-CALLED “ WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 39

which Bismarck extended to Mgr. Masella, the papal nuncio
at Munich, to visit Berlin. The Holy See was certainly
gratified by this advance on the part of him who had said
that he “ would never go to Canossa but the dignity of the
nuncio forbade a journey to the Prussian capital under the
circumstances then subsisting (1). The chancellor then
suggested Kissingen, a neutral place, for the desired inter-
view ; he was accustomed to repair thither annually for the
Bake of the waters, and the prelate might like to try the “cure,”
and at the same time to have a little talk about matters which
interested both Rome and Germany. The nuncio found it
convenient to visit Kissingen, and several interviews were held
by the two diplomats. But saving the fact that the ice was
broken, nothing came of these meetings ; for while Bismarck
offered to send an ambassador to the Vatican, he insisted on
a recognition of the May Laws by the Pontiff. Shortly after
this tentative attempt at reconciliation, negotiations were re-
sumed at Vienna, between Mgr. Jacobini, papal nuncio at
the Austrian court, and Count Hubner, acting for the chancel-
lor. Mgr. Jacobini was one of the most conciliatory of men ;
and Hubner became convinced that if the prelate and his mas-
ter were to meet, the latter would obtain his desires. Gas-
tein, in the duchy of Salzbourg, was selected for another trial
of Bismarckian cajolery or intimidation ; but the conciliatory
Jacobini informed the chancellor that the Holy See would
never recognize the May Laws. Not until 1880 did Bismarck
resume his approach toward Canossa. Then he introduced
in the Landtag his first modification of the May Laws.
While retaining the power of maintaining or abolishing, at its
own good pleasure, the royal commissaries whom it had
charged with the duty of administrating the temporalities of
dioceses, the government renounced its usurpation of the right
to depose ecclesiastics ; and in 1881 it recognized, without
forcing them to take the obnoxious oath of absolutely uni-
versal obedience, vicars-general for the dioceses of Paderborn,
Osnabruck, and Breslau. Bismarck even recognized the

(1) Justin McCarthy, in his Life of Leo XIII., appreciates the reason for which Mgr.
Masella declined to go to Berlin : “ It was quite clear to a man of Pope Leo's experience
and observation that If he were to send bis Munich nuncio to Berlin, the news would go all
over the world that the Holy See was sueing for peace with Prussia."

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Pope’s appointment of Mgr. Kopp to the see of Fulda, and
that of Mgr. Korum to the see of Treves. However, the new
bishops, disposed as they were to yield to the chancellor in
all reasonable matters, found themselves so trammelled, that
Windtborst styled them “bishops in vinculis .” Such was
the condition of ecclesiastical affairs when Windthorst forced
the hand of the government by his proposition to grant free-
dom to the Catholic clergy “ in everything concerning the
Sacrifice of the Mass and the administration of the Sacra-
ments.” This instalment of justice having been rejected by
two thirds of the deputies, and the same fate having be-
fallen a proposition to restore their olden “ dotations ”
to the clergy, Bennigsen, the leader of the National
Liberals, declared that all such projects were very inop-
portune, since “ Rome was then very nearly vanquished.
Let us have but one or two years of patience, and we will
gather the fruits of our excellent policy, for we will have
conquered the Pope.” But the elections of 1882 showed
that the Liberal leader had erred ; the Centrists gained sev-
eral seats, and Rome manifested no signs of yielding to the
governmental pretensions. Another step toward Canossa
was taken on May 31, 1883, when it was decreed that a
deposed bishop might be “ pardoned ” by the emperor, and
might then resume the administration of his diocese ; that the
Minister of Worship might dispense candidates for ecclesi-
astical offices from “legal formalities”; that ecclesiastical
students should not be obliged to undergo those State ex-
aminations which had been proclaimed as the best guarantees
against superstition and fanaticism. This enactment was
certainly a great relief to the harried clergy ; but not one of
the deposed bishops was “ pardoned” by William I., until
after the visit of the crown-prince (the future Frederick HI.)
to Leo XIII., when that “ favor ” was accorded only to the
bishops of Lilnbourg and Munster. It is evident that Bis-
marck, realizing that the more severe features of his “ War
for Civilization ” should disappear, still trusted to be able to
save the principles for which he had contended ; those
principles would be abandoned, only when the May Laws
would be abrogated. This truth was so evident to Wind-

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thorst, the leader of the Centre, that when Mgr. Galimberti,
then nuncio at Vienna, advised him to use his influence
with his party in favor of a less vigorous opposition to the
chancellor, His Little Excellency, as the Catholics affection-
ately termed their chief champion, replied : “ I shall accede
to your request most willingly ; but not before the May
Laws have been formally withdrawn. They do indeed
swear to us that these laws will no longer be applied ; but
while that assurance may suffice for to-day, who will answer
for the morrow ? The freedom of us Catholics is a right.
Can we abandon it to the caprice of a Minister ? ” And here
let it be noted that this refusal of the Centre to hearken to
the recommendation of Mgr. Galimberti, who was known to
have merely echoed the views of Pope Leo XIII., was an
excellent refutation of that falsehood which the school of
Bismarck had so assiduously circulated in justification of its
persecution of the Catholics ; namely, that the Homan Pon-
tiff held in his hands the political opinions and the votes of
the German Catholics. And the firmness of Windthorst was
rewarded when, by suggesting the pontifical arbitration in the
affair of the Caroline Islands, the chancellor showed that he
was willing to advance a little further on the road to Canossa.
The proceedings connected with this arbitration afforded to
Bismarck an opportunity of treating directly with the Holy
See ; and the first consequence of the rapprochement was
the governmental consent to the filling of the then vacant
sees of Cologne and Fribourg. It was then that Cardinal
Ledochowski, yielding to the wishes of the Pontiff, resigned
a diocese to which he could scarcely hope to return ; and
the provost of Kcenigsberg, Dinder, was made archbishop
of Posen. Then Mgr. Kopp, bishop of Fulda, was called to
a seat in the Upper House of Prussia ; and although the
traditions of the German Church seemed to forbid such a
course, the prelate thought that circumstances dictated his
acceptance of the position (1). Bismarck had confidence in

(1) A seat In the Upper House bad been offered, at various times during tbis century, to
several bisbopa ; but it bad always been declined. Frederick William IV., tbe brother of
tbe emperor William I., and tbe most just of all tbe Hobenzollern, would gladly have seated
several bishops among bis legislating nobles ; and be approcbed Mgr. Gelssel, then arch-
bishop of Cologne, in the matter. Tbe prelate replied : “ So long as tbe bishops can sit In-

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Mgr. Kopp ; but his object in ranging him among the peers
was to obtain a means of treating with the Centre without
any intervention of his own personality. On May 21,
1886, another modification to the May Laws was decreed.
The State renounced its examination of clerical students, re-
establishing the theological schools as they had been before
1873, but requiring their superiors to furnish to the Min-
ister of Public Worship their statutes and the names of
their professors. The Pope was recognized as the superior
judge in ecclesiastical affairs ; and the royal court which
had sat in Berlin since 1873, for the purpose of deciding
those affairs, was suppressed, thus exhibiting no longer the
anomaly of a Protestant tribunal fining or imprisoning
Catholic priests who had refused absolution to persons
who were unworthy, or who had celebrated Mass or attend-
ed the dying without governmental permission. Finally, the
elections of Feb., 1887, having qonvinced Bismarck that the
power of the Centre was growing instead of diminishing, he
determined to make such further modifications of the obnox-
ious laws as he deemed apt to conciliate a party, whose aid
he sadly needed. These modifications were presented in
five Articles ; and when they were examined by Windthorst
in the name of the Centre, the perspicacious leader decided
as follows : The first Article ought to be rejected, he contend-
ed, because although it allowed the existence of diocesan
seminaries, it gave to the State a very badly defined right of
surveillance over the teaching in those institutions — an indefi-
niteness which bade fair to invite trouble of various kinds.
The second Article, treating of the right of Yeto, should be
partly amended, said Windthorst, and partly rejected ; it was
condemnable as an entirety. The third Article, acknowledg-
ing the disciplinary authority of the Church, was welcomed
by the great Centrist. The fourth Article, recognizing the
right of the Church to inflict canonical punishment on her
subjects when they violated her laws, was of course approved.
The fifth Article, which permitted the return of certain re-
ligious orders or congregations, and excluded others, was

ithe Upper House only by royal favor, they will never wish to sit there.” Bazin ; loc. cit ,
,p. 217.

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THE BISMAROKIAN SO-CALLED “WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.” 43

sternly criticized. The eminent jurisconsult said : “ Among
the demands which Catholics will never cease to make, is
that for the freedom of the religious orders and congrega-
tions. We shall say nothing here concerning the Society of
Jesus, and the orders which are alleged to be affiliated to it ;
their return must be considered by the Reichstag, for it was a
law of the empire that crushed them. But we must declare
At once that there are two objections to the law which is now
proposed. The first objection arises from the fact that per-
mission to return is granted solely to the orders or congre-
gations which are either devoted to the care of souls, or are
given to offices of charity, or lead a contemplative life.” Then
the government is reminded of the moral, enconomical,
and material losses which have been entailed upon the Cath-
olic populations by the expulsion of the teaching orders. The
second objection to Article Y. is derived from the state of
utter dependency on the government in which the restored
orders will be, if the law is passed. Windthorst concluded
his report with this declaration : “ It is indubitable that this
project cannot be regarded as a final revision of the existing
politico-ecclesiastical legislation ; and until such revision is
effected, it will be futile to talk about a durable peace be-
tween the Church and the State.” The arguments of its lead-
er convinced the entire Centre ; but it soon transpired that
Pope Leo had written to the archbishop of Cologne, mani-
festing a willingness to be content, for the present , with the
governmental concessions. * Then the Centre yielded ; not
deeming it good policy to be more exigent than the Roman
Pontiff in matters concerning which he was certainly the
better judge. The new law was enacted ; and thenceforth
the State exercised its “ right ” of Veto on the appointment of
a pastor, only so far as the title of pastor was involved. The
government merely insisted that the bishops should appoint
to pastorships no priests who already labored under civil
condemnation. The ordinaries were to be no longer obliged
to fill vacancies within a stated period of time ; and if a
pastor were condemned to prison, the pastorship was not to be
regarded as ipso facto vacant, as the May Laws had prescribed.
Disciplinary measures were no longer to be notified to the

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governors of the provinces. The Law of May 20, 1874, con-
cerning the administration of vacant dioceses, was cancelled.
Toleration was to be extended to religious orders which
were devoted to the contemplative life, to exercises of Chris-
tian charity, or to the education of young girls. With these
final modifications, the “War for Civilization ” practically
terminated ; as its instigator and conductor avowed, nothing
of his scheme remained, save “ ruins and rubbish.” Bis-
marck had arrived at Canossa.

CHAPTEE II.

FREEMASONRY IN LATIN AMERICA. — GARCIA MORENO, “THE
MODERN ST. LOUIS.” *

The first Masonic Lodge in Spain was established in 1726
the first Lodge in Madrid was opened in 1731. Not having
been condemned by the Church until 1738, the Brethren of
the Three Points enjoyed twelve years of perfect freedom for
the diffusion of their poison, ere its deadly nature was per-
ceived by the Spaniards. Lodges were soon founded in all
the principal cities ; and when, in 1756, the government of
Ferdinand VL awoke to a sense of its duty in reference to
the sectaries, they had multiplied to such an extent, and
their nefarious doctrines had been so widely spread, that
very little good was produced by that celebrated prohibitory
edict which Masonic apologists affect to stigmatize as “ the
greatest and most cruel persecution of their order.” When
Charles III. left Naples in order to mount the Spanish
throne in 1759, many of his courtiers were adepts of the
Square and Compass ; for the Neapolitan court had been a
hot-bed of Masonry for many years. With the advent of
these Italian brethren, the most prominent of whom was the
Marquis of Squillace, the Lodge of Madrid found its power
greatly increased ; and from that day the influence of the
sectaries on the policy of the Spanish government has been
almost permanent. Much of this success was originally due
to the fact that in those days the Spanish Lodges, like those

* This chapter appeared in the Amer. Cath. Quarterly Review , Vol. xxili.

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of the Two Sicilies, depended from the Grand Lodge of
London, and to the analogous fact that the English cabinet
encouraged the propagation of Masonry in both Spain and
Portugal for its own political and commercial interests.
Keene, the English ambassador at Madrid, devoted most of
his energy and time to the Masonic propaganda ; and when
Charles IV. ascended the throne, nearly all the commerce of
Spain was in English hands. Under Charles IV., many of
tthe highest functionaries of the kingdom and not a few ecclesi-
astics were votaries of the Dark Lantern. Even the Inquisition
was invaded by the sectaries. Llorente, the secretary of the
dread tribunal, was one of the most active Masons of his day ;
and to his perversion is due that shallow diatribe which the
average Protestant regards as a “ History ” of the institution
which is his most persistent nightmare (1). The power of the
sectaries had become so great in 1800, that Urquijo, the
Prime Minister of Charles IV. and a Mason of high degree,
“thought that the time had come when Spain might definitely
eease to have any relations with Rome, and he issued a se-
ries of edicts tending to that end. Fortunately the king
hearkened to the representations of Pius VII., and revoked
the schismatical decrees ; but the Masonic influence was not
easily thwarted. Urquijo and his brethren devised a plan
for the un-Christianization of their country ; he proposed to
import several hundred thousands of Russian and other Jews
into Spain, and to give such pecuniary aid and political en-
couragement that in time they might dominate the Christian
element in the kingdom (2). The French invasion prevented
the actuation of this design; and it was already forgotten
when, in 1869, after the enforced abdication of Isabella IL,
the eminent Mason, Zorilla, endeavored to actuate a similar
plan. Zorilla proposed to the government of the temporary
Regency (Marshal Serrano) that an invitation to settle in Spain
should be extended to many thousands of English Protestants.
“ These immigrants,” he insisted, “ must all be English Protest-
ants ” / and unpatriotically ignoring the fact that modern
Spain had owed to Irish Catholic immigrants much of the

fl) For an account of Llorente and his book, see our Vol. t!., p. 402.

(2) La Fcknte ; Ecclesiastical History of S)Xiin, Vol. ivM p. 144. Madrid, 1873.

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military power that she still possessed, he added : “ Spain
(i e., Spanish Freemasonry) has no use far Irish Catholics."
In 1880, another luminary of Freemasonry, Sagasta, then
Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Spain, and unfortu-
nately Prime Minister of Alfonso XII., affected feelings of
commiseration for the Russian Jews, against whom the Slavs,
maddened by the poverty to which Hebraic usury had re-
duced them, had risen in wicked riot. The tender-hearted
statesman urged Alfonso XIL to pay the travelling expenses
of 80,000 of the Russian and Polish Jews if they would settle
in Spain, and to give to each head of a family or adult un-
married man a share of the public lands, all necessary im-
plements, etc., and a guarantee of support until they were
able to sustain themselves — that is, until the greater part of
the lands of their Christian neighbors would have fallen into
their clutches (1). Alfonso XII. declined to promote the
Masonico-Jewish project ; but, nevertheless, the brethren an-
ticipated much power for their order during the reign of the
weak son of Isabella II. In the Bulletin of the Symbolic
Scotch Grand Lodge, Jan., 1882, we read: “In Spain cruel
trials have frequently been the portion of Freemasonry;
tolerated and proscribed alternately, the lot of the Spanish
brethren has never been an enviable one. We were a little
anxious as to the course that Alfonso XIL would pursue in
our regard ; but we are satisfied, since his promises to enforce
liberty of conscience have been fulfilled. The advent of the
illustrious Grand Master, Praxedes Mateo Sagasta, to the
Prime Ministership, assures to Freemasonry the power of
exercising its mission of benevolence, and of diffusing its en-
lightenment" Sagasta had just given a proof of his desire
to “ enlighten” the Spaniards by an endeavor to make civil
marriage the law of the land, and by a declaration that “ if
that law entailed a rupture with Rome, the government of
Alfonso XII. would draw inspiration from the conduct of
Charles III., and would give an example of firmness against
the obstinacy of the Church” (2). Sagas ta’s project for the

(1) Deschamps ; Secret Societies and Society , Bk. ill., cb. 6, 6 L Sixth edition. Parte*.
1888.

(8) Association Catholique , Jan. 15, 1888.

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demoralization of Spanish society was perforce postponed to*
a more propitious moment ; for the resistance of the Catholic
deputies was then seconded by the fear, on the part of the
government, of a Carlist rising in defence of legitimacy.

In just proportion with the increase of Masonic influence
in Spain, the educational establishments of the kingdom had
become corrupted. In many of the ecclesiastical institu-
tions, during the reign of Charles III. (1746-1788), heretical
doctrines were openly taught. Estalla, rector of the Semin-
ary of Salamanca, and an avowed Freemason, taught a
“natural religion,” and therefore atheism, to the future re-
ligious teachers of the people ; and the authorities of the
seminaries of Osma, Cordova, and Murcia soon imitated his
audacity. In the time of Charles IV. (1788-1808), and for
many years afterward, the once glorious Chapter of St Isi-
dore paraded its “ enlightenment” In accordance with the
system of Aranda (1), it endeavored, nearly a century before
Bismarck’s similar enterprise in our day, to relegate to the>
regions of the past all doctrines which it chose to consider
as “ Jesuitical,” and it did not hesitate to inoculate its stu-
dents with the poison of Locke and d’Alembert. Incred-
ulism and immorality, therefore, were not then the foreign
exotics which they had hitherto been ; although, just as in
the Spain of to-day, the immense majority of the people re-
mained true to their faith, and the nation was then, as now,
the most moral of all the nations of continental Europe. Th$
Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Philip II. was a
thing of the past ; the Spain of Aranda, Urtijo, Campoman-
es, Jovellanos, and others of that ilk— all graduates of Ma-
sonry— was preparing the catastrophe for the Spain which
we know, the Spain of Espartero, Prim, O’Donnell, Castelarr
Zorilla, Sagasta, and other Masonic pygmies, who fancied,
each in his turn, that the mantle of Cardinal Ximenes had
fallen on his shoulders (2).

(1) See our Vol. iv.. p. 468.

(2) Tbe reader who desires to learn how the ecclesiastical authorities In Spain were pre-
vented. during the latter part of the eighteenth century aud during the flret years of the*
nineteenth, from displaying the energy which was necessary for a successful combat with
Freemasonry, will do well If he studies the work by Henry Bruck, Professor in tbe Semin-
ary of Mayence. entitled. The Secret Societies in Spain. Mayence. 1881.

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A natural consequence of the spread of Freemasonry in
Spain was its introduction into the Spanish- American colon-
ies. According to the Monde Ma^onnique (1), an organ of
the Dark Lantern which has every facility for the acquisi-
tion of information concerning this and similar matters, there
were, at the outbreak of the revolution against the mother-
country, ninety-nine Lodges in Peru alone. That these and
other Lodges were the instigators of the insurrections of
1815-1830, and that they simply obeyed the orders given by
the heads of European Masonry, when they so acted, was
deliberately stated by the Protestant diplCmat, Count Haug-
witz, in the memorial which he presented to the European
sovereigns who formed the Congress of Verona in 1822 ; and
as his assertion was not contradicted by the Masonic half of
the assembly, it may be regarded as strictly true (2). Nearly

(1) In the issue for March, 1875.

(2) Some passages from this memorial by Haugwitz, who was the Prussian Prime Mlnis-
iter of that day, ought to Interest the reader. “ Now that I am at the end of my career
(be was then seventy years old, and bad been in the Prussian cabinet nearly forty years),
I think that it is my duty to draw your attention to the aims of those secret societies whose
poison threatens humanity to-day more than ever. Their history is so intimately inter-
twined with my own that I cannot refrain from giving some details. ... I had scarcely
attained my majority when I found myself occupying a distinguished place in the highest
grades of Masonry. Before I could even know myself, before I could understand the situa-
tion into which I had rashly plunged myself, I found myself entrusted with the chief direc-
tion of a part of Prussian, Polish, and Russian Masonry. As far as its secret labors were con-
cerned, Masonry was then divided into two sections. The first affected to aim at a discovery
of the philosopher’s stone ; its religion was Deism, or rather Atheism ; Its directive centre,
under Dr. Zinndorf, was in Berlin. The second section, the apparent head of which was
Prince F. of Brunswick, was very different In open antagonism with each other, these two
parties united in order to obtain the domination of the world, to subjugate every throne-
such was their object. It would be superfluous to tell you how, in the satisfaction of my ar-
dent curiosity, I mastered the secret of each of these sects ; the truth is that the secret is no
mystery for me. And that secret disgusts me. It was in 1777 that I assumed the direc-
tion of some of the Prussian Lodges : It was three or four years before the convent of Will-
helmsbad, and the invasion of the Lodges by Illuminism. My sphere of action em--
braced the brethren scattered through Poland and Russia. Had I not seen the fact with
my own eyes, I would not believe It possible that governments could close their eyes to
such a disorder as a state within a state. . . . Our object, like that of the olden Templars, was
to dominate over thrones and sovereigns. . . . There appeared a book entitled Errors and
Truths, This work produced a sensation, and it impressed me deeply. ... At once I
thought I would now learn what was hidden under the emblems of the Order ; but accord-
ing as I penetrated further into the dark cavern, deeper grew my conviction that there
was something very different in the last recesses. The light came when I found that
Saint-Martin, the author of this work, was really one of the coryphees of the Chapter of Sion.

. . . Then I acquired the firm conviction that the drama which began in 1789, the French
Revolution, the regicide with all its horrors, had not only been long prepared, but that it
was the result of our association, of our oaths, etc. . . . Those who know me can judge
of the effect which these discoveries produced on me. ... My first care was to communi-
cate my discoveries to King William III. Both of us were convinced that all of the Ma-

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all of the Spanish commanders-in-chief in America during the
years 1816-1830 were Freemasons; hence the numerous under-
standings with the rebel leaders, and hence, notably, the capit-
ulation of the Spanish army at Ayacucho, in Peru, in 1824 (1).
When the Spanish- American colonies had become indepen-
dent states, then the halcyon days of Spanish-American
Masonry, if we are to judge from a Masonic point of view,
entered on their course. “ Then,” says the Monde Maqon-
nique , “ a love of enlightenment and of liberty arose at
once, together with independence, as though from a propi-
tious soil.” The entire political history of most of the Span-
ish-American republics, and much of that history in the
others, shows that while the soil may have been propitious,”
its Masonic cultivators produced no other crops than chronic
revolutions and all their attendant miseries. As for the
“ love of enlightenment ” which the Lodges claim to have
manifested in every land of Latin- America during the periods
when the civil power has been in their hands, it cannot be
denied that if Satanic hatred of Catholicism and of its works
be a test of “ enlightenment,” then, indeed, the Dark Lantern is
more luminous than the sun of justice and of truth. It may
be observed, however, than in Spanish and Portuguese- Amer-
ica, just as in other Christian lands, “ love of enlightenment ”
has not been the impelling motive of Freemasoniy in its war
to the knife against the Church. In the eyes of Freemasonry,
the crying sin of the Church is not that she is ignorant rather
than enlightened, despotic rather than liberal ; her unpar-
donable fault is that she is the Church of Jesus Christ. As

sonic graded from the lowest to the highest, were destructive of all religious principles,
conducive to the execution of the most criminal designs, and that the lowest grades were
used as mere mantles to cover the iniquities of the highest. This conviction, snared with
me by the king, caused me to renounce Masonry absolutely ; but the king deemed it pru-
dent to abstain from an open rupture with the Order.” When Haugwitz’s memorial had
been well discussed by the sovereigns assembled in Verona, the Prussian king al- ne re-
fused to take measures against Freemasonry ; and from that day the Lodges regarded Prussia
i as the sole continental State willing to accomplish their work, fas aut nefas. The emper-
ors of Austria and Russia determined to act as energetically as their Masonic surroundings
would permit. Alexander I., the Russian cznr, had hitherto protected Masonry, but now
be proscribed it; in 1816 he had expelled the Jesuits from his empire, but in 1824, as we
have seen, he sent General Michaud to Rome to prepare the way for the return of Russia
into the Catholic fold. He died mysteriously as soon as the errand of Michaud was made
Anown. Was that death the work of Masonry ?

0.) See the cited work by Bruck for several Spanish authorities for this assertion.

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M. de Champagny well said : " There has ever been, from the
beginning of the world, but one single war between the
Church, whether patriarchal, Mosaic, or Christian, and that
Proteus which was styled Paganism in ancient times, which
appeared as Mohammedanism in the sixth century, which
was disguised as Protestantism in the sixteenth century,
which masqueraded as Incredulism in the eighteenth, and
which now combats as the Revolution” (1) ; and Freemasonry
is the personification of each one of these pests. The Satanic
sympathies of Freemasonry, whatever may be the individual
sentiments of some of its adepts, are especially evinced in La-
tin-America ; for not one of the Masonic “ Powers” in those
regions interrupted its relations with the Grand Orient of
France, when that great and shining exemplar of all the
Masonic virtues erased from its Constitution the name of God
and all mention of the immortality of the human soul (2).

Elsewhere we have alluded to the peculiar tactics adopt-
ed by Freemasonry in its war against Christianity in Portu-
gal (3) ; to the deliberate attempt to corrupt the entire Portu-
guese clergy — an enterprise the plan of which had been
sketched originally by Weisshaupt as calculated to subju-
gate the German priesthood, and which was recommended
afterward by the Roman Alta Vendita, as promising to place
a Carbonaro on the throne of Peter (4). This Satanic meth-
od of warfare had attained a measure of success in Ger-
many and in Tuscany in the last years of the eighteenth
century ; and, as we have seen, it did not fail entirely when
it was waged in Portugal in later days. With light hearts,
therefore, the Brethren of the Three Points undertook in
Brazil the most important campaign which they have ever
conducted in Latin- America. Their first victory entailed the
capture of no less a personage than Dom Pedro, the son and
heir of John VI. In 1814 John VT. returned to Portugal,
whence the Napoleonic invasion had driven him ; but Dom
Pedro remained in Brazil and became a Mason. It is not
improbable that it was the advice of his fellow-sectaries
that induced Pedro to prefer an independent sceptre of

(1) The Power of Word*, p. 31. Paris, 1880.

(2) See our Vol. 1y.. p. 436. • (3) Ibid., Vol. p. 267. (4) Ibid,, p. 4W.

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Brazil to a double crown of Brazil and Portugal (1): In a let-
ter written to his father on July 15, 1822, he advised the old
monarch to imitate him, since, as he argued, “ the Portu-
guese were very foolish when they felt such horror for so
philanthropic an institution ” (2). In 1826 Dom Pedro was
made Grand Master of Brazilian Masonry, and during his
entire reign he endeavored to establish the order firmly in
his dominions. No open attack, however, was made on
Catholicism during this reign, and the same prudence was
observed during the greater part of the reign of Dom Pedro
II. (1831-1889). But during all these years the Freemasons
were insinuating themselves not only into all the religious
confraternities which abound in Brazil as well as in Port-
ugal, but also into the priesthood, and even into the epis-
copacy. For many years before the persecution which we
are about to narrate, it was with the greatest difficulty that
any person could be admitted into the Confraternity of Mt.
Carmel, or into the Third Order of St. Francis, unless he
Was previously enrolled in some Masonic Lodge (3) ; and we
can perceive the significance of this alarming fact if wo
remember that as in Portugal, so in Brazil, few persons of
any respectability did not belong to one of these or similar
confraternities, so great and manifold were the religious and
social advantages reaped by their members (4). Certainly it
seems strange that the adepts of Square and Triangle waited
until 1872 to doff the mask which had hitherto hidden their
hideousness (5). Perhaps they had not been sure of the ap-

(1) Clavel ; Pictorial History of Freemasonry , Pt. 11., ch. 8.

(?) This letter is given in its entirety by Mencaccl, in bis Documents for the History ofr
the Italian Revolution , Vol. 1i.. p. 67.

(3) Deschamps ; loc. eft., Bk. 111., ch. 35, § 1. * '

(4) The riots which occurred in Porto, in Portugal, in 1862, and in which the war-cry
was, “ Down with the Sisters of Charity 1 ” were instigated by the Third Order of St.
Francis. These wonderful disciples of the Seraph of Assisi, in the letter of dismissal from
their hospital which they sent to the Daughters of 8t. Vincent, protested that “ their deter-
mination was caused by no unfavorable opinion of the Sisters.” Such a remark was
superfluous. They were Freemasons, and that fact explained their action.

(5) In May, 1878, the Bulletin of the United Grand Orient of Brazil thus manifested
the ’designs of the order: “We are fighting to fulfil the grand humanitarian and social
mission which has been reserved for our order in the universal country which is afflicted
by errore a thousand years old. . . . Our reason, our intelligence, tell us that we are
progressing toward perfectibility, and the chief point is to regulate our march so as to
arrive at the goal more surely. . . . Hidden behind the screen of so called religious be-
liefs, the Black Men (the priests) propagate the fatal principle of obligatory Ignorance, In,

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probation of the emperor, Dom Pedro II., a sovereign who
would have liked to serve God without displeasing the devil ;
but it is certain that just before the persecution, when Dom
Pedro was about to return from his travels in North America
and Europe, it was common talk in Brazil that the stay of
His Majesty in Italy and in the United States had rendered
him bitter against the Holy See, and that the Brazilian
Church might expect trouble. Villefranche narrates that one
morning in 1872, at about seven o’clock, just as Pius IX.
had finished his Mass, word was brought to His Holiness
that the emperor of Brazil, who was then visiting Victor
Emmanuel, desired an audience. In spite of the early hour,
the Pontiff consented to receive Dom Pedro. When the
Brazilian had made his obeisance, the Pope said : “Well,
what can I do for Your Majesty? ” Dom Pedro replied : “ I
beg Your Holiness not to call me ‘ Your Majesty ’ ; at pres-
ent I am the Count d’ Alcantara.” — “ Very well,” said the
Pope, “what can I do for the Count d’ Alcantara ? ” — “I
have comb,” replied Dom Pedro, “ to ask permission to bring
the King of Italy to Your Holiness.” Villefranche says that
Pius IX. arose, and with his eyes flashing, he cried : “ There
is no use in proposing such a thing to me. When the King
of Piedmont restores to me my states, I may consent to re-
ceive him, but not until then shall I do so.” The same in-
terview is narrated somewhat differently by the Brazilian
authority on whose report of the Masonic persecution De-
.schamps relies as being of such unimpeachable value that
“ it would be rash not to accord it full confidence.” Accord-
ing to this authority, when Dom Pedro had made his impu-
dent request, the Pontiff calmly said : “ My little Count, you
.understand nothing about these things ; so don’t talk about
them.” The pontifical retort, says the Brazilian friend of
Deschamps, cut Dom Pedro to the quick, and he determined
to punish Pius IX. “ One thing is certain,” adds this
authority ; “ before the emperor’s return from Europe, it
was circulated everywhere in Brazil that His Majesty had

order to perpetuate their sacerdotal authority. . . . The people will now tear off the bandages
of slavery which the oppressors of the human conscience have placed over their eyes. . . .
The advantages of modern civilization will now take the place of the routine of centuries.*'

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become ill-disposed toward the Church ; that he was greatly
excited against her, and that she might expect much mis-
fortune. These rumors, I repeat, were heard everywhere
before the return of the emperor, and events justified them.”
Whether or not this rumor was well-founded, the spring of
1872 was signalized by a declaration of open war, on the part
of Freemasonry, against the Church of the immense majority*
of the Brazilians. At that time Brazilian Masonry was di-
vided into two factions, each having its own Grand Lodge —
the one being of monarchical spirit, and the other being
essentially radical and revolutionary. The Grand Master of
the first faction was Bio Branco, the President of the Cabinet.
On March 3d the Bio Branco Masons gave a banquet to their
leader, in order to congratulate him on some measures which
he had induced the Parliament to vote ; and one of the features
of the celebration was a discourse by a priest . The speech
was reproduced by the most important journal of the empire,
the Commercio , and the full name, position, titles, etc., of
the orator were carefully detailed. The audacious ecclesias-
tic was immediately suspended by his bishop ; and then, from
every corner of Brazil, were heard the howls of “ the friends
of Brazilian liberty.” Herod and Pilate shook hands ; on
April 16th the “Conservative” Grand Orient (the Lavra Dio)
invited the Badical Grand Orient (the Benedictinos , so called
from the place of its meeting) to sink all political differences
in order to wage a more successful war against the “ Black
Men.” That this union might be the more impressive, both
Orients announced in the newspapers that on a certain day
the Brethren would have a solemn Mass of Bequiem offered
for one of their number who had just died “ impenitent and
unabsolved.” The defiance of episcopal authority was un-
mistakable; but unfortunately the bishop of Bio Janeiro
neglected his duty, and the Mass was celebrated with all the
pomp of Masonry. Having thus vindicated their claims to
popular respect in the capital, the sectaries turned their at-
tention to the provinces. Mgr. Vital Gonsalves de Oliveiro,
a prelate of sweet character and of great tact,' had just been
installed in his diocese of Olinda, when the journals an-
nounced, on June 27th, and in the name of the united Grand

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Orients, that on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul a Mass of
thanksgiving would be celebrated in the Church of St. Peter,
in commemoration of the foundation of the Lodge of Olinda.
In spite of his gentleness, Oliveiro was of stamina very differ-
ent from that of the bishop of Eio ; therefore, he immediately
wrote to each pastor in his diocese a reminder that no priest
could officiate or assist at a function which was avowedly
Masonic. The clergy refused to do the bidding of the Orient ;
but the Brethren were not discouraged. On July 3d the
newspapers told the public that a Mass of Requiem would
be offered in the Cathedral for the repose of the soul of a
recently deceased Brother, and that the Lodge of Olinda
would attend with all its insignia. Again the clergy did
their duty ; and then the Masonic journals called on the peo-
ple to protest against the wickedness of the priests “ who
would not pray for the dead.” The bishop of Olinda was
asked to refute the following argument : “ Why does the bish-
op so limit Freemasonry as to prevent it from appearing
officially at the religious functions in his churches ?
Masonry is a holy institution ; the proof of this assertion lies
in the fact that there are many Masons among his clergy, even
in his Chapter, and also in the confraternities. The Free-
masons are excellent Catholics ; for the same hands which
carry the mallet in the Lodges carry the sacred banners and
images in religious processions.” On December 28th Mgr.
Oliveiro sent a circular to all his clergy, calling on them
to procure either an abjuration from all the Masonic mem-
bers of the confraternities, or a resignation of their member-
ship (1). It was found that in some of the confraternities
there were no Freemasons ; but there were too many of the
societies which proved that the sectaries had not belied them,
and these were disciplined by the interdiction of their spe-

(1) The reader must know that in this term “confraternities ” were included In Brazil
as in Portugal, not only organizations like those to which that name is given In other
countries, but also those bodies which bad been instituted by Pombal for the adminis-
tration of the business affairs of the parishes, but principally in order to attenuate the
authority of the bishops. These parochial “ confraternities ” were very different from our
Boards of Trustees, or the French Omseils de Fdbrique , or the Italian Fabriche ; they not
only bandied the parochial funds, but they arranged all festive celebrations, and invited
whom they pleased to assist at them. They wore special costumes, and attended all mar-
riages, funerals, and very many civil functions.’

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cial chapels. As was to be expected, and as the Masons had
hoped, the censured confraternities continued to hold their
accustomed services in their interdicted chapels, one of their
number presiding when no priest could be induced to officiate.
They also continued to attend, in their special regalia, at all
the parochial services in their churches. In the diocese of
Para every thing happened as in that of Olinda ; and the par-
ish clergy of each diocese were notified by the rebels that if
the confraternites were not allowed to appear in church and
to receive the Blessed Sacrament “ in their Masonic capacity,”
the said confraternities would remove the sacred vestments
from the churches, and would take possession of the keys of
the Tabernacles. The threat was fulfilled ; and whenever a
priest was summoned to give the Holy Viaticum to the dying,
he was obliged to humiliate himself before the president of
his Masonic confraternity, unless time allowed him to go to
the Tabernacle in the episcopal residence, or to that in one
of the convents. In none of the parishes of Olinda and Para
'was Mass now offered ; and the interdicted confraternities
confiscated to secular purposes (or to their individual
pockets) the funds which had been placed in their care for
the celebration of Masses for the Dead, or for other pious
intentions. These diabolic outrages could not continue in a
Catholic community without much risk of life and limb on the
part of the perpetrators ; the people are not always as
patient as their spiritual advisers. It became necessary,
therefore, for the “Masonic Catholics” to invoke the aid of
the civil authority against the Canons of the Church. They
appealed to the Parliament, not having reflected that the
deputies of the people might sustain the authority of the bish-
ops ; but their mistake was perceived by the Minister of
Ecclesiastical Affairs, a notorious Freemason, and he advised
them to appeal to his tribunal. The advice was followed ;
and with Masonry as a judge in a case to which it was a party,
the issue was not doubtful. On June 12, 1873, an imperial
decree ordered the bishops to withdraw the interdict which
they had pronounced against the confraternities ; the govern-
ment alleging that the Papal condemnation of Freemasonry
was of no value, since it had never received the royal exequatur ,

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or, in plain language, since His Brazilian Majesty had not
accorded to it his gracious approbation. By a strange coin-
cidence, at the very moment that the decree of Dom Pedro
II. was placed in the hands of Mgr. Oliveiro, he received also
the Papal Brief, Quanquam dolores, in which, under date of
May 29th, Pius IX. approved all that he and the bishop of
Para had done in the matter of the Freemasons, and ordered
him to communicate this approbation to the entire Brazilian
hierarchy. The bishop of Olinda, therefore, wrote to the em-
peror : “ Sire, I hold now in one hand your order to raise the
interdict which I have inflicted, and in the other hand I hold
a Brief in which His Holiness commends all that I have done
in that matter. Your Majesty shall judge whether I am free
to obey your commands.” Oliveiro immediately published
the Papal Brief throughout his diocese, and the government
summoned him to answer for the “crime” of publishing a
document from Borne without the royal permission. But
when it was learned that all the bishops in the empire had
been equally guilty, the trial was postponed indefinitely, and
other and more radical measures were taken against the prin-
cipal offender. On January 2, 1874, an imperial commissary
presented himself at the residence of the intrepid prelate in
Pernambuco. When informed that the officer was charged
witli the unpleasant task of arresting him, Oliveiro replied
that he would yield only to force. Then the commissary laid
his hand on the bishop’s arm — the conventional sign that force
was being used — and the prisoner asked to be allowed to re-
tire to his private rooms for a few moments. Permission
having been accorded, Oliveiro withdrew. When seated in
his chamber, he rapidly wrote a protest against the govern-
mental proceedings. Then he put on all his pontifical robes,
and went to his private chapel. After a moment of prayer, he
opened the door, and asked the waiting commissary : “ Quem
qweritis ? ” Then he read his protest, and followed the officer
to the man-of-war which was to convey him to Bio. Having
arrived in the capital, he was confined in the arsenal for three
days, and then he was visited by certain officers, who asked
him what he had to say in answer to the charges which they
read to him. No answer could be made ; for, as a Catholic

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bishop, Oliveiro could not admit the competency of a secular
tribunal in religous matters. But he asked for paper, wrote
a few words, and sealed the document. When the judges who
were to try his case assembled, they were very anxious to
learn the nature of his pleading ; but when the important
paper was opened, it was found to contain : “ Jesus autem
tacebat .” On February 21 the daring criminal was con-
demned to four years of hard labor in a fortress ; but Dom
Pedro deigned to alleviate the sentence by exempting his
victim from the hard labor. Immediately after the disposal
of the case of the bishop of Olinda, that of Mgr. Macedo, the
bishop of Para, received the same treatment, and ended in the
same manner. After two years of imprisonment, both prel-
ates were graciously “ pardoned ” by the emperor. But the*
bishop of Para was destined to undergo many more painful
experiences at the hands of the Masonic apostles of “ enlight-
enment and liberty.” The most notable of these sufferings
was that which was entailed by his condemnation of the
Confraternity of Our Lady of Nazareth ; an institute which,
founded in 1842 for noble purposes of mutual edification, had
latterly fallen almost entirely into the clutches of Masonry.
In October, 1877, this association was celebrating one of its
feasts with a grand procession, when suddenly the spectators
were shocked by the sight of pictures of entirely naked wom-
en, and of other representations even more obscene, amid the
images of Jesus, Mary, and the saints (1). The episcopal
condemnation of this sacrilege, accentuated by an interdict
of the chapel of the culpable confraternity, entailed legal
proceedings which lasted for more than two years, and finally
the Masons gained their cause ; for the president of the prov-
ince, Goma y Abreu, was an adept. On the night of the day
when it had been decided that the sacrilegious organization
should retain possession of its chapel, the brethren passed in
procession before the palace of the bishop, insulting him with
hootings and groans. The religious images were carried, as
usual, in this procession ; but the character of the participants
was shown by the fact that nearly all wore their hats and
had cigars in their mouths ; and in order that the victory

(1) Thus the Paris XJnivers of November 10. 1879, quoting the Diario de Belem.

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might be more clearly understood as one of Masonry, the
rooms of the Lodge of Para were grandly illuminated during
the festivities, and the brethren furnished the populace wfth
an expensive exhibition of fireworks, the chief features of
which were Masonic emblems (1). But in spite of the
apparent triumph of the Lodges over the bishops of Olinda
and Para, the more perspicacious of the brethren could not
fail to perceive that their outrageous violations of law and
justice, to say nothing of their open scorn of all that most
Brazilians held as dearer than life, were drawing to the clergy
the sympathies of all honest men, and were tightening the
bond of unity between the hierarchy and the priests. There-
fore it was decided in the superior councils of the Dark Lan-
tern that there should be a cessation of the high-handed
proceedings of the previous seven years ; that there should be
a recourse to the more prudent wiles of European Masonry ;
that, in fine, the order should endeavor to gain possession of
the family, and to control the education of the young. This
resolution was foreshadowed in the address which Saldanha
Marinho, the Prime Minister, delivered on the occasion of his
installation as Grand Master of the United Grand Orients of
Brazil : “ I now assume, before you and before Brazil, the oner-
ous duty of defending zealously those grand social ideas,
the realization of which is the aim of every free people. . , .
I have always opposed the logic of truth to the subtleties of
Jesuitism ; the serenity of my conscience to the sophisms of
Lypocrisy ; the rights of free reason to the excesses of
fanaticism ; the spread of healthy teaching to the propagation
of error and obscurantism. . . . Strong though he may be
in the possession of truth, no one man can succeed in this
propaganda of generous ideas ; and here is revealed the power
of our order. You have already demonstrated your good will
and your zeal by a generous supply of the resources which are
necessary for the success of the mission which I have under-
taken ; and, thanks to that aid, during the last seven years I
have sent into the farthest corners of the empire, and even
into foreign lands, the echo of our complaints and aspirations,
And our demand for the restoration of rights which have been

(D The Univer8 of December 31, 1879, quoting the Boa Nova de Para.

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.‘suffocated by the armies of fanaticism and superstition. . . .
The task which we have proposed to ourselves, and not
merely in the name of Masonry, but for its sake, since the
upholding of these principles involves the very existence of
the order, is to procure the institution of civil marriages > so
as to free our fellow-citizens from the tyranny of an exclusive
and intolerant Church ; and, secondly, to obtain the secular-
ization of all cemeteries , thereby protecting the mortal remains of
the dead from the insults of a religious sect which pretends to
extend its power into the domain of the Infinite ” (1). But
Saldanha Marinho relinquished his portfolio in 1880 ; and the
new cabinet, beyond an enforcement of the principle of govern-
mental supervision of education, evinced no desire to aid the
Masonic propaganda. So “ clerical,” in fact, did the new ad-
ministration show itself, that it even ventured to allow the
Capuchins to undertake the evangelization of such of the
Brazilian tribes as were still Pagan. The bishops were
allowed comparative freedom in the exercise of their pastoral
duties ; and large numbers of the deluded sectaries, who had
learned from the recent persecution that Masonry was not an
inoffensive and merely benevolent association, made their
formal abjurations. The advent of the Republic, proclaimed
in 1889, gave great encouragement to the Brethren of the
Three Points, and the laws were all revised in a Masonic
sense ; but hitherto the fervent Catholicism of the nation has
prevented any open and extraordinary persecution of the
Church.

While the “ Liberator,” Simon Bolivar, was fighting for the
independence of Columbia (2), the civil administration of
the country was in the hands of the vice-president, General
Santander, a democrat like the president, but a man of
pronouncedly Masonic heart. Bolivar would have willingly
allowed the Church to live at peace in a free state; but
Santander could perceive no happiness in a state which did
not hold the Church in slavery. By means of a Lodge which
he founded in Bogota, entitled a “ Society for Enlightenment,”

(1) Journal of Belgian Masonry , Dec. 8, 1879.

(2) Such was tbe name given in 1810 to tbe republic formed by tbe confederation of
Venezuela, New Granada and Equador.

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and of which he caused himself to be elected “ Venerable, ,r
he spread the poison of a bastard Liberalism among the peo-
ple, inoculating them with the notion that they would never
be really free, until Columbia possessed a truly Liberal Con-
stitution, and that such a panacea would never be obtained un-
less they ceased to elect to the Congress men who were
“ reactionaries, fanatics, and secret partisans of the Spanish
Government” In 1821 an imposing majority of Freema-
sons greeted General Santander when he met the new Con-
gress in Cucuta. The first act of the precious body was to
abolish the article of the Constitution which declared that the
Catholic religion was that of the State ; and the pretext was
the non-necessity of such a declaration in a Catholic republic.
When the leader of the minority, Dr. Banos, announced that
his party could not vote for an enactment which was “ radically
vicious,” he was instantly expelled from the Congress. Of
course the Congress voted for the abolition of the Inquisition,
which had been dead, to all intents and purposes, for many
years ; and it also decreed that the right of censorship should
be vested in the government alone — a power which Santander
immediately exercised by authorizing the publication of the
works of Voltaire, Helvetius, Diderot, Bentham, as well as of
many immoral pamphlets. The Congress also prepared the
way for a schism, that favorite engine of Satan when heresy is
not immediately possible. The Holy See had allowed the
Spanish sovereigns to exercise a jus patronatus in the nom-
ination of bishops and in the administration of the ecclesias-
tical revenues, and the Congress pretended to have inherited
this right from the defunct government Then, in order to*
banish the last effects of “ centuries of intellectual slavery,”
the Congress imposed a new plan of studies on the univer-
sities, and even on the ecclesiastical seminaries. One of the
obligatory text-books was the work of the materialist and
atheist, Bentham ; and when a certain eminent professor, Dr.
Margallo, stigmatized this author as impious, he was thrown
into prison. Bestrepo, the historiographer of Columbia and
a friend of Santander, is constrained to say of this republican
tyranny : “ This congressional legislation made a tabula rasa
of the customs, as well as of the religious convictions, of the*

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nation ; in a word, it was a complete anomaly in face of the
sentiments of the people. Therefore the simple announce-
ment of another session of this Congress caused as much
consternation as though an earthquake or a hurricane had
been predicted. In fact, such Congresses, being composed
almost exclusively of lawyers and of lads who were crammed
full of French theories (those of 1789), had but one object — to
impregnate Columbia with the doctrines of Voltaire and
Kousseau ” (1). Had the Masonico-Liberal administration
given to the people some material compensation for the im-
pieties with which it deluged the land, the spirit of the world
might have triumphed in Columbia ; but brigandage,
devastation, military executions for pretended royalism, and
rapine of every kind, became the order of the day. This
condition of affairs caused every lover of order and of common
decency to call on Bolivar, the man who had liberated them
from the “ yoke of the Spaniards,” to free them from the more
intolerable yoke of Masonic Liberalism ; some begged him
to restore the Spanish domination ; others, and the most re-
spectable of all, suggested that he might don a crpwn as
“ Emperor of the Andes.” These clamors reached Bolivar
immediately after his great victory of Potosi, obtained on
April 1, 1825, and by which he had liberated Peru. He pre-
pared immediately to proceed to Columbia, and in the mean-
time he forwarded a proclamation announcing his journey :
“ The noise of your discords has reached me, even in Peru, and
I return to you with an olive-branch in my hand. If your dis-
orders do not cease, anarchy and consequent death will tri-
umph over the ruins of Columbia.” During the ensuing three
years the efforts of the Liberator to endow his compatriots
with peace and prosperity were continually thwarted by the
Santanderist Masons ; the Lodges had resolved to rule or to
bury Bolivar and Columbia in the same tomb. But a crisis
arrived on Sept. 25, 1828, when, at the hour of midnight, a band
of these partisans of liberty and enlightenment assailed the
presidential palace, and with daggers in hand, forced their way
to the bedroom of Bolivar, crying for his death. The attempt

(1) History of Columbia , cited by Berthe in his Garcia Moreno , President of Equador ,
Avenger of Christian RighU and its Martyr. Paris, 1887.

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failed ; the president had escaped by a secret passage. The*
leading assassins were shot; and Santander, convicted of
complicity, was banished. Then the Liberator issued the
following decree : “ Considering, firstly, that the State would
be soon brought to ruin if impunity were accorded to crim-
inals and rebels, I resume the dictatorial power with which
the people invested me. Considering, secondly, that Secret
Societies have the planning of political revolutions for their prin-
cipal object , and that their baneful character is sufficiently mani-
fested by the mystery with which they surround themselves , I
order the suppression of all such societies , and the closing of
their Lodges” Then, exhorting the clergy to inculcate un-
ceasingly the principles of Christian morality, he continued :

“ It is because the country has abandoned correct principles
that a spirit of madness has taken possession of it. In order
to neutralize the wicked theories which have utterly demor-
alized the poeple, let the clergy preach obedience and respect
to all.” Finally, being persuaded that the youth of Columbia
were being poisoned by the doctrines then in vogue in the
universities, he decreed that the entire curriculum should be
revised in a Christian sense, and that a profound study of
religion should be introduced, “ so that the young men of the
nation might have weapons wherewith to combat impiety and
their own passions.” Nothing but sad experience and the
ascendency of truth could have wrung thes6 admissions from
Bolivar ; for during his early years he had advocated the
principles of 1789 almost to the point of deifying the Revo-
lution. The adepts of Square and Triangle never forgave the
Liberator for his declaration of these Christian sentiments
and, had they not expected much from the day when his parti-
sans would be obliged to appeal again to the polls for the Ap-
probation of the electors, he would have paid for his temerity
with his life. In the meantime the people were made to be-
lieve that every vote cast for a partisan of the dictator would
be a vote for a Columbian monarchy, and when the elections
had been held it was found that the Masonic candidates
had triumphed in nearly every instance.

On January 13, 1830, the new Congress assembled ; and
in spite of the entreaties of his friends, and although the*

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diplomatic corps promised its unanimous support if he
would retain his dictatorship, the Liberator resigned his
office, never, as he protested, to assume it again. “And
now,” he wrote to the Congress, “ let my last official act be to
recommend Congress to protect continually our holy religion,
the fruitful source of the blessings of heaven; and to entreat
Congress to restore its sacred and imprescriptible rights to
public instruction , which has been made a cancer for Colum-
bia Fellow-citizens, I must say, and with the blush of

shame on my brow, that while we have won our independence,
it has been toon at the expense of every other blessing . . . .
For twenty years I have served you as soldier and as
magistrate. During that long period we have freed our
country, procured liberty for three republics, repressed
many civil wars, and four times I have resigned to the peo-
ple the supreme power which they confided to me. To-day
I fear that I pray be an obstacle to your happiness, and
therefore I resign, for the last time, the magistracy with
which you have honored me. The most unworthy suspi-
cions have been expressed in my regard, and I have been
unable to defend myself. A crown has been offered to me
frequently by men who are now ambitious of supreme power,
but I always refused that crown with the indignation of a
sincere republican. I swear that a desire for a throne has
never stained my soul. Columbians, I conjure you to heed
my last entreaty. Be united, and do not become the assas-
sins of your country ! ” On May 8th Bolivar departed from
Carthagena, with the intention of sailing for Europe. While
waiting for the ship which he was not destined to board, he
heard of the dismemberment of the Columbia which he had
founded. Venezuela had become independent under the
presidency of General Paez. The three departments of
Equador, namely, Quito, Cuenca and Guayaquil, had become
autonomous under the rule of General Flores. His dearest
frjend, Marshal Soucre, the victor of Ayacucho, had been
assassinated by his rivals — a crime which caused the Liber-
ator to say : “ It is the blood of Abel that has been shed.”
He heard also that the students in Bogota — lads who were
pupils of Masonic instructors — were amusing themselves by

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making a target of his portrait Perhaps he was not sur-
prised when General Urdaneta, having made a kind of coup
cT etat in order to save the remnants of Columbia, sent to
him a deputation, entreating him to resume the dictatorship.
His reply was : “ A gate of bronze separates me from power
— legality. I cannot assume an authority with which another
has been invested.” His friends begged him to think of
his dying country ; but he replied : “ There is no hope for
my country. Such is my conviction , and my despair .” The
moral agony which such reflections entailed on Bolivar
brought him to the tomb. Having been taken to the city of
Santamarta, where his friends ^thought that he might obtain
:sufficient strength to enable him to prosecute his European
trip, the bishop told him that he was at the point of death.
He received the Last Sacraments with edifying fervor, and
died in his forty-eighth year on December 17, 1830, a victim
of Masonic treachery and of Masonic essential lack of
patriotism.

The Republic of Equador, born of the dismemberment of
that ephemeral creation of Bolivar, the Republic of Colum-
bia, was subjected for many years to the pretendedly “ Con-
servative Liberalism ” which found its fit exponents in men
like Flores, Rocafuerte, and Roca. This Liberalism exhib-
ited the sovereignty of the people as its essential principle ;
but its Conservatism consisted in preserving itself in power,
even in spite of the will of the nation. The hybrid did not
trouble itself to persecute the Church, so long as the Church
showed herself willing to serve as its obsequious servant.
Under the rule of Urbina and Robles hypocritical Con-
servatism disappeared, and unblushing Radicalism seemed
destined to consummate a ruin which was already more
than half completed. But a new era dawned for Equador
in 1861, when Garcia Moreno was elected to the too frequent-
ly prostituted presidential office. In his first message to
the Congress the new president asked that body to adopt
a Constitution which would be Catholic in every sense of
the term — one which would furnish “ the sole means of
regenerating the country by an energetic repression of crime,
by giving a solid education to youth, and by protecting the

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holy religion of our ancestors, so that by the aid of that re-
ligion we may procure a realization of reforms which neither
government nor laws can effect by their own unaided efforts.”
The draft of a Constitution which Moreno submitted began
with the declaration that the Holy Catholic and Boxhan
Religion was the sole Religion of the State. But the
Freemasons, who, in spite of the generally Catholic result
of the recent elections, had obtained a few seats in the
Congress, could not miss this opportunity of protesting
against “ a retrograde legislation.” One of the sectaries, a
priest, declaimed a discourse of Mirabeau in theatrical style,
concluding with the sage observation that “ since God is as
visible as the sun, it would be an injurious superfluity to
recognize Him officially.” Such reasoning did not convince
the deputies ; the entire Constitution was adopted, and
Moreno found himself free to endow Equador with the
blessings of a truly liberal and Christian government. Our
limits do not permit any detailed narrative of all that was
effected for his country by this “ modern St. Louis.” The
loud-mouthed praters about popular enlightenment should
have admired him ; for when they murdered him, the free
schools of the republic numbered 500, with 32,000 pupils,
whereas under the Masonic government there had been only
200 schools, with 8,000 pupils. The spirit which animated
Garcia Moreno is indicated in the message which he had
prepared for the Congress as he was about to enter on his
third term of office, when the Masonic assassins sent him to
his reward in heaven : “ Only a few years have elapsed since
Equador repeated every day the lament which the Liberator,
Bolivar, expressed in his last message to the Congress oi
1830 : ‘ I must say, and with the blush of shame on my
brow, that while we have won our independence, it has been
won at the expense of every other blessing.’ But since that
time, having placed our trust in God, and having abandoned
the course of impiety and apostasy which entices the world
in this epoch of blindness, we have reorganized ourselves
into a thoroughly Catholic nation, and therefore each day
has beheld an increase of happiness and prosperity in our
beloved country. Once Equador was a body from which life

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was departing; it was being already devoured, just as a
corpse is devoured by a multitude of those hideous insects
which the license of putrefaction allows to develop in the
darkness of the grave. But to-day, obeying the Sovereign
Voice which commanded Lazarus to issue from his tomb,
Equador returns to new life, although she still retains the
winding-sheet of death, that is, spme remnants of the misery
and corruption in which she was once wrapped. In order
to justify my words, I need only render an account of our
progress during the last two years, referring you to the
special reports of each ministerial department for documents
and details ; and, in order that you may perceive the extent
of pur progress during this period of regeneration, I shall
compare the present conditions with those which once ob-
tained. And I shall institute this comparison, not for our
self-glorification, but in order to glorify Him to whom we
owe everything, and whom we adore as our Redeemer,
Father, Protector, God. ... To the perfect liberty which
the Church now enjoys among us, and to the apostolic zeal
of our virtuous pastors, we owe a reformation of the clergy,
an improvement in morals, and so great a diminution in the
number of crimes, that in our population of more than a
million there are not enough of criminals to fill our peni-
tentiary. To the Church we owe those religious organ-
izations which constantly produce such happy results in the
education of the young, and in the care of the sick and the
poor. ... If I have committed any errors, I ask your pardon
a thousand times ; but I am sure that my will has not been
at fault. But if, on the contrary, you find that I have
succeeded in my endeavors, attribute all the merit, firstly,
to God and the Immaculate Dispenser of the inexhaustible
treasures of God’s mercies ; and, secondly, to yourselves,
to the people, to the army, and to all the members of the
administration who have seconded my efforts so admirably.”
A strange document, truly, in the closing years of the
nineteenth century — a document which could never have
emanated from a Cavour or a Bismarck, a Gambetta or a
Thiers, a Metternich or a Von Beust, a Palmerston or a Glad-
stone. But all the messages of Garcia Moreno to the

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Equadorian Congress had sounded the same notes, and all of
his governmental acts had accorded with his professions.
When Victor Emmanuel completed his series of sacrilegious
robberies by the seizure of the Papal capital in 1870, Garcia
Moreno was the sole potentate in Christendom who protested
against the iniquity. Immediately after the news of the crime
had reached Quito, the president of Equador dictated to his
foreign secretary the following protest, which was sent at once,
according to constitutional formality, to the Italian Minister
for Foreign Affairs : “ The undersigned, Minister for Foreign
Affairs of the Republic of Equador, has the honor of address-
ing the following protest to His Excellency, the Minister of
Foreign Affairs of King Victor Emmanuel, because of the
melancholy events which occurred last September in the
capital of the Catholic world. Since the very existence of
Catholicism has been menaced in the person of its august
head, the representative of Catholic unity, who has been
despoiled of that temporal dominion which is the necessary
guarantee of his independence in the exercise of his divine
mission, Your Excellency will admit that every Catholic, and
with much more reason every government which rules over a
considerable number of Catholics, not only has the right, but
is also bound to protest against this hideous and sacrilegious
crime. However, before raising its voice, the Government of
Equador waited for protests on the part of the more power-
ful states of Europe against the unjust and violent seizure of
Rome ; and it waited for what would have been much more,
gratifying — that His Majesty, King Victor Emmanuel, would
voluntarily do homage to the sacred character of the noble .
Pontiff who governs the Church by restoring its stolen
territories to the Holy See. But the Equadorian Government
waited in vain ; the monarchs of the old continent remain
mute, and Rome continues to suffer under the oppression of
Victor Emmanuel. For this reason the Government of Equa-
dor, in spite of its feebleness, and in spite of the enormous
distance which separates it from the Old World, now fulfils
its duty by protesting before God and before men, and
especially in the name of the Catholic people of Equador,
against the wicked invasion of Rome and the subjugation of

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the Roman Pontiff — deeds which have been perpetrated in
violation of repeated promises, and which are now disguised
by derisory guarantees of independence which do not hide
the ignominious servitude of the Church. The Equadorian
Government protests, finally, against the consequences which
the Holy See and the Church will suffer because of this
shameful abuse of power. While addressing this protest to
you by formal order of His Excellency, the President of this
Republic, the undersigned still trusts that King Victor
Emmanuel will repair the injuries which he has inflicted in
a moment of madness, before his throne is reduced to ashes by
the avenging fire of the Revolution” (1).

Not content with this personal protest, Garcia Moreno
urged all the governments of South America to follow his ex-
ample ; but, as he afterwards said : “ I had little hope that
our sister republics would respond to the invitation ; I merely
wished to fulfil my duty as a Catholic by giving the greatest
possible publicity to our own protest. Columbia replied in
moderate terms, but negatively ; Costa Rica answered neg-
atively, and in au insolent manner ; Bolivia informed me

Chili and Peru did not condescend to acknowledge the receipt
of my communication. But, after all, what does it matter ?
God has no need for us in order to accomplish His designs , and
He will accomplish them in spite of hell , and in spite of the
emissaries of hell , the Freemasons , who are more or less masters
in every land of South America, saving our own ” (2). The
Brethren of the Three Points were not then masters in Equa-
dor, but their perennial efforts to obtain the supremacy were
redoubled when Garcia Moreno so nobly stigmatized the chief
masterpiece of their praft in the nineteenth century.

In 1873 the sectaries were spurred to a definitive enter-
prise by a realization that Equador was indeed lost to them
unless “ the modern St. Louis ” was deprived of power.
Garcia Moreno, a president of an American republic, and in
this enlightened nineteenth century, had proposed to an
American Congress that the land which it represented should
be solemnly consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus ; and

(1) El Nacional, of Quito, January 18, 1871. (2) Berthe ; loc. cit ., Vol. 11., ch. 2.

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the Congress had passed the resolution without discussion,
and unanimously. In the beginning of April, 1873, the
bishops of Equador met in the Third Plenary Council of
Quito, and Moreno informed them of his desire that they
would do their part toward consecrating the republic to the
Sacred Heart. On April 13th the synodals decreed that
“the greatest happiness of a people being the preserva-
tion of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Boman faith, and since
that preservation depends on the mercy of God, the nation
should humbly seek the Heart of Jesus in order to obtain
that blessing. Therefore the Council of Quito solemnly
offers and consecrates the republic to the Sacred Heart,
supplicating that Heart to be the protector, guide, and de-
fender of this country, so that it may never wander from the
Catholic, Apostolic, and Boman faith, and that all the in-
habitants of Equador, conforming their lives to that faith, •
may find in it their happiness in time and in eternity.”

As soon as this decree was conveyed to the president he laid
it before the Congress, and that body immediately decreed :
“Considering that the Third Plenary Council of Quito has
by a special decree consecrated the republic to the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, placing us all under the protection of that
Heart, it befits the representatives of the nation to associate
themselves with an act which is so conformable to their em-
inently Catholic sentiments. Considering that this act, so
efficacious for the preservation of our faith, is also the best
means of assuring the prosperity and progress of the State,
the Congress decrees that the republic, consecrated forever
to the Heart of Jesus, adopts that Heart as its Patron and
Protector. The Feast of the Sacred Heart shall be hereafter
a civil holiday of the first class, and shall be celebrated
in every cathedral in the most solemn manner possible.
Furthermore, in order to excite the zeal and piety of the
faithful, there shall be erected in every cathedral an altar
dedicated to the Sacred Heart, in front of which there shall be
placed, at the expense of the State, a slab commemorative of
the present decree.” As We have said, this decree was passed
unanimously. On the day appointed for the public ceremony
of the consecration, while the function was being per-

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formed in each of the five other cathedrals of the republic,
the president and Congress proceeded in grand state to the
cathedral of Quito. After the archbishop had promulgated
the decree in the name of the Church, Garcia Moreno repeat-
ed it in the name of the Republic of Equador. Has any ruler
of modern times thus brought before the minds of his people
the days of Charlemagne and of St. Louis ? The “ apostle
of ignorance and of superstition ” was sentenced to death in
the secret councils of the Dark Lantern ; but, as usual in the
execution of Masonic sentences of the highly placed, the
*“ removal ” was to be made to appear as the natural result
•of the crimes of the victim. Incendiary pamphlets were
scattered broadcast throughout Equador, all exhibiting Mor-
eno as a fit subject for popular execration. Thus, the in-
famous Moncayo described him as a cruel hypocrite : “He
avows himself a partisan of the Syllabus , in order to com-
mit crimes at his convenience. Communicating and shoot-
ing ; proscribing, scourging, and confiscating, — such are the
•offerings which please the God of the Jesuits.” From Lima
there came a pretended “ History of Equador,” in which the
following Masonic instigation to murder was read : “ In
that nation which has exterminated so many tyrants there
is still energy enough to deliver it from this most detestable
despotism. Let the ferocious terrorist and his accomplices
tremble before the justice of the sovereign people ! The
young, the crowds, need no general to lead them to the combat.
When suffering attains to a certain degree of intensity, a
martyr arises to lay the oppressor low.” In a. diatribe en-
titled, “A Perpetual Dictatorship,” the impious Montalvo
accused Moreno of having driven many women of the street
to suicide, because they preferred death to a residence in the
asylum of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. The conse-
cration to the Sacred Heart, said Montalvo, had turned
Equador into a convent of idiots, with a permanent scaffold
on the premises (1). From time to time the Masonic journals

(1) The charges of Montalvo were so absurdly calumnious that Charles Welle, who had
been consul of the United States In Quito, was constrained to write to the San Francisco
Chronicle : “ These accusations cause a smile of pity and contempt ou the part of all who
have known Garcia Moreno. Having resided In Equador very many years, and being
perfectly acquainted with all that has recently occurred there, I know well what I say;

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throughout South America published accounts of Moreno’s
assassination, undoubtedly with the idea of impressing upon
the popular mind the necessity of such a catastrophe. Thus,
on October 26, 1873, twenty-two months before the real min>
der, a despatch from Guayaquil informed Peru that Moreno
had just “ fallen under the dagger of his aide-de-camp, Colonel
Salazar, who had been helped by a crowd of persons who
were hostile to the Jesuits. Twenty-three Jesuits perished
with the president, and the people would have killed the
Papal nuncio as well, had he not succeeded in escaping to
the mountains.” Moreno was frequently warned from re-
liable sources that the Lodges had decreed his death, and
that he should never go abroad without an escort He al-
ways replied that if the Masons had decreed his assassin-
ation, no human means would prolong his life; that, how-
ever, he was in the hands of God. In reply to one of these
warnings, he said : “ I have already learned from Germany
that the German Lodges have instructed those of America
to move heaven and earth to overthrow the government of
Equador. Probably Grand Master X. is concerned in this
instruction ; but if God extends His mercy to us, what have
we to fear, even though our power is equal to zero, when
compared with the power of that clay-footed Colossus ? ”

In July, 1875, Moreno wrote the following letter to Pope
Pius IX. : “ Most Holy Father, I implore your blessing, hav-
ing been chosen again, without any merit on my part, to
rule this Catholic republic during the coming six years.
The new presidential term does not commence until August
30th, when I take the oath to the Constitution, and then I shall
dutifully inform Your Holiness officially of the fact ; but I
wish to obtain your blessing before that day, so that I may
have the strength and the light which I need so much in or-
der to be unto the end a faithful son of our Redeemer, and a
loyal and obedient servant of His infallible Yicar. Now that
the Masonic Lodges of the neighboring countries, instigated
by Germany (I), are vomiting against me all sorts of atrocious

and I do not exaggerate wben I declare that to me Garcia Moreno appears to be the most
illustrious man that South America ever produced.”

(1) During, the infamous Bismarckian ” War for Civilization,” it was the general belie!
Among the Catholics of South America that the German chancellor was the prime mover of

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insults and horrible calumnies; now, also, that the Lodges
are secretly arranging for my assassination; I have more
need than ever of the Divine protection, so that I may live and
die in defence of our holy religion, and for the dear republic
which I am called once more to rule. What happiness can be
nine, Most Holy Father, so great as that of being hated and
calumniated for the sake of our Divine Redeemer ? And how
great a happiness your blessing will be to me if it procures
for me from heaven the privilege of shedding my blood for
the God who shed His own for us on the cross ! ” On the
evening of August 5th a priest demanded audience with the
president, stating that his business could not be deferred-
When in the presence of Moreno, he said : “ You have been
warned that the Freemasons have decreed your death, but
you have not been told when the sentence will be exe-
cuted. I come to tell you that your days are numbered ;
that the conspirators have resolved to murder you as
soon as opportunity offers. Probably the deed will be
committed to-morrow ; therefore, take your measures ac-
cordingly.” Moreno quietly answered : “ I have received
many similar warnings ; and, after mature reflection, I have
come to the conclusion that there is but one measure for me to
take, and that this measure is to keep myself in a state wherein
I shall be fit to meet my God.” Then he proceeded with his
work, which was the preparation of the message, some pas-
sages of which we have given. At six o’clock on the follow-
ing morning, August 6th, the Feast of the Transfiguration of
Our Lord, Moreno assisted at Mass, according to his daily
habit, in the Church of St Dominic (1) ; and he received
Holy Communion, undoubtedly fully prepared to recognize
the Holy Eucharist as, in all probability, the Viaticum for his
momentous journey. Having returned to his residence, he
spent some time with his family, and then gave some finish-
ing touches to his message. Shortly after midday he left

all the Masonic manoevres in their regions ; that he took this means of adding to the em-
barrassments of the Holy See, while he was endeavoring to constitute a German National
Church. Certainly the word of the well-informed and calmly judicious Garcia Moreno
gives more than plausibility to the belief.

(1) Moreno never missed bis dally Mass; and every day b^pead a chapter of the New
Testament and one of the Imitation. Every evening 1$ recited the Rosary, generally
with his family.

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his palace, followed at a little distance by an aide-de-camp,
his intention being to read his message to the Congress. On
the way he entered the cathedral, and prayed before the
Blessed Sacrament for nearly an hour. Leaving the house
of God, he turned his steps toward the Government House,
on the opposite side of the Great Square ; but he had walked
only a few yards when seven assassins rushed on him. One
of the murderers cried : “ Die, strangler of liberty ! ” and as
the martyr of liberty fell, pierced by six bullets and by four-
teen dagger-strokes, he cried in clear voice : “ I die, but God
does not die — Pero Dios no se muere ” (1). From among the in-
numerable panegyrics on Garcia Moreno we select the follow-
ing tribute from the pen of Louis Veuillot : “ Garcia Moreno
was superior to vulgarity, indifference, and forgetfulness;
he would have been above hatred, if God could permit
that virtue should not entail hatred. It may be said of More-
no, that he was the most an tique of all moderns ; he was a
man who did honor to humanity. It was not sufficient for him
to be one of Plutarch’s characters ; he entertained an idea of
grandeur which was vaster and more just .than that of
Plutarch. Alone, unknown, but sustained by faith and his
great heart, he effected all that Plutarch describes his
worthiest heroes as having effected ; and he did all this
in accordance with his natural character, and by a careful
observance of a rule which he had planned for himself. But
he did more ; continually aiming higher, he dared to attempt
a task that our epoch deems impossible. In the government
of Equador he was a man of Jesus Christ Let us salute

(1) Tbe crime of 1875 was not the first that Masonry perpetrated against tbe life of
Moreno. Shortly after the final catastrophe, tbe Roman CiviUd Cattolica , the calmest and
most unsensatlonal periodical in Europe, narrated bow, in tbe fall of 1869, a certain
Equadorfan scientist received satisfactory proof tbat the Lodges bad even at tbat time re-
solved to murder tbe great president. This gentleman bad studied in various European
universities ; among others, in that of Berlin. When about to return borne, where a profes-
sorship in the University of Quito awaited him, he called on one of his Berlinese professors
in order td bid him farewell. The young man had won the admiration and affection of
the German, who was highly placed in the councils of the Dark Lantern. When tbe old
Freemason learned that his friend was about to accept a professorship to which he had
been appointed by Garcia Moreno, whom the youth greatly admired, be remarked that
there was no sense in accepting favors from a man who would be dead before the ambi-
tious lad arrived in Kquador. The words produced no deep Impression In the mind of the
hearer ; but when he arrived in Guayaquil he learned that tbe president had just escaped
assassination, and that very foolishly the chief criminal, Cornejo, had been punished
merely by banishment for eight years.

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this noble figure, the most beautiful of modern times ; it is
worthy of history. A man of Jesus Christ ; that is, a man
of God, in public life ! And he was, as the phrase runs, a
man of his time ; he studied the sciences of his time, he
appreciated its habits, he understood its customs and laws ;
but, nevertheless, he was never aught else than an exact fol-
lower of the Gospel, a faithful servant of God ; and he made
his people, who had been Christian indeed, but were being
devoured by Socialism, a people faithful in the service of
God. It was a little republic of South America that showed
this wonder to the world. Moreno was a Christian, and one
of a stamp not at all affected by our modern rulers ; he was
one of those leaders of whom the nations have lost all remem-
brance ; he was a dispenser of justice, such as the seditious
and the conspirators of our day seldom meet. In Moreno
there was something of Medicis, and something of Ximenes.
He was Medicis, less the trickery of that prince ; he was Xim-
enes, less the cardinality! scarlet. Of both Medicis and
Ximenes he had the genius, the magnificence, and the love
of country. What is wanting in the glory of Garcia Moreno ?
Nothing. He furnished a unique example to the world
amid which he lived ; he was an honor to his country ; and
perhaps his death was the greatest service that he ren-
dered to his people. He showed the human race what
valor and faith can effect when they are united to enlight-
ened patriotism ” (1). On Sept. 20, 1875, Pope Pius IX., in
one of those eloquent Allocutions in which the Captive of
the Vatican was wont to unmask the designs of the persecut-
ors of the Church, described the work of Masonry in
France, Germany, and Switzerland ; and then turning his
discourse to South America, he said : “ Amid all these

governments thus delivered to the delirium of impiety,
Equador has been miraculously distinguished for its spirit
of justice, and for the indomitable faith of its president.
But alas ! even in Equador there are not wanting some im-
pious men who consider it an insult to their pretended
modern civilization that there should be found a govern-
ment which, while devoting itself to the material welfare of

(1) In the Univers , September 27, 1875.

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Its people, endeavors at the same time to assure the moral
And spiritual progress of that people. These valiant men
decided to murder their illustrious president ; and he suc-
cumbed to the steel of the assassins, a victim of his faith, and
of his Christian love for his country.”

Freemasonry did not attain to power immediately after it
bad murdered Garcia Moreno ; Borrero, the successor of the
martyr, was a Liberal, but nevertheless a good Catholic. But
in 1877 a creature of the Lodges, a drunken soldier named
Yintimilla, was raised to a dictatorship, and a carnival of
Masonry was initiated. A decree for the secularization of
education, that is, for an atheistic training of the young, was
issued immediately ; and when the pastors, with the bishop
of Biobamba at their head, protested against the iniquity,
another decree pronounced the penalty of banishment against
“ ecclesiastics who alarmed consciences.” Mgr. Chiea, the
archbishop of Quito, announced to the government : “ Come
what may, I shall continue to resist the propagation of error.
Such is my duty, and with the grace of God I shall be faith-
ful to it.” Fifteen days after this protest, on Good Friday,
March 30th, the archbishop officiated at the Mass of the Pre-
sanctified in the cathedral He had scarcely taken the wine
of ablution when he was attacked by horrible convulsions,
and died within an hour. The autopsy showed that twelve
grains of strychnine had been given to the prelate. Of course,
the assassins were never punished. The remains of the arch-
bishop had scarely been placed in the tomb, when Yintimilla
ordered all the pastors in the republic to celebrate, on April
19th, Masses of Bequiem for the souls of “ all the martyrs of
holy Liberalism who had fallen since March 19, 1869 ” — this
date being that of a famous insurrection against Moreno. To
this decree the bishops opposed an order forbidding “ a scan-
dal to the Catholic people ”; and as nearly all the Equadorians
applauded the action of the prelates, the dictator perforce
contented himself with an oath of revenge. In quick succes-
sion came a revocation of the Concordat which had guaran-
teed the liberty of the Catholic religion, a suppression of all
the ecclesiastical salaries, and the exile of many pastors.
The bishop of Guayaquil died with all the symptoms of

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poisoning, and the bishop of Biobamba escaped assassination
by fleeing to the mountains. The people of Equador were on
the verge of revolution, when Vintimilla resolved to change his
policy. The exiled priests were recalled, and the bishops
were made to understand that the government desired peace.
This “ treachery ” on the part of their creature enraged the
Masons ; the Catholics could not rely on the sincerity of their
recent enemy ; and in 1883 a revolution, in which both Liber-
als and Conservatives took part, overthrew Yintimilla. From
that time until the Masonic eruption under Alfaro, the sequels
of which still persevere in the form of nearly every con-
ceivable kind of persecution of the Church, the Brethren of
the Three Points allowed Equador to rest in comparative
peace.

The sad distinction of having succumbed, perhaps pusil-
lanimously, to Masonic machinations more frequently than
the other South American Republics, belongs to Brazil and
Equador. But in all the other states the Church has found,
at least in our day, much reason for sorrow. In Argentina
4the Government asked the Holy See, in 1875, to send some
missionaries and some female religious who would labor in
the outlying regions of the republic, where there was *
dearth of spiritual and civilizing agencies. Pius IX. im-
mediately arranged with the superiors of the Congregation
of St. Francis de Sales, the now wide-spread society which
had been founded in Turin by Don Bosco, for the departure
of ten Salesians for the promising field ; and he ordered
twelve Sisters of the Congregation of Our Lady della Mis -
ericordia , the mother-establishment of which is in Savona,
to set out for the same destination. In the audience of fare-
well which His Holiness accorded to the little band, be
necessarily reflected on the iniquities recently perpetrated
by Masonry in countries which were sisters to Argentina,
and in order to encourage the new apostles, he said : “ This
time I am not sending lambs to a pack of wolves. You are
going to a country where the authorities are favorable to
you, and God will fructify your labors.” But scarcely had
the Salesians and their auxiliaries landed in Argentina,
when they learned that the ’ Masons, enraged because of a.

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failure to induce the Congress to enter on a course of Sa-
tanic enterprise in regard to Catholicism, had incited the
populace of Buenos Ayres to an anti-Jesuitical riot, massa-
cred several of the Jesuit professors who were instructing the
Argentine youth in the sciences apparently dear to the Ma-
sonic heart, and levelled the college to the ground. Nor did
Chili— hitherto, perhaps, the most pronouncedly Catholic
state in Latin America — escape the contagion. In 1875 the
Grand Lodge of Chili, ruled by English and German mer-
chants and speculators, drew up a plan for the “ complete
secularization ” — that is, for the atheization — of the social
institutions of the republic. This scheme, entitled a “ Plan
of Work for the Grand Lodge of Chili,” was published by
that excellent Masonic authority to which we are indebted
for so much of our knowledge concerning the enterprises of the
Brethren, namely, the Monde Ma^onnique, in its issue of
January, 1876. In the third Article of this plan it is or-
dered that : “ The Section for Instruction shall attend to :
1st, the foundation of secular schools ; 2d, to the furnishing
of aid to every society (especially the Protestant colporteurs)
which gives gratuitous instruction to the poor (that is,
which tries to deprive the poor of their faith) ; 3d, to con-
tribute to the prosperity of all the scientific, literary, and
artistic institutions in the country (provided that there were
any which were not Catholic) ; 4th, to give popular
conferences for the spread of such knowledge as tends to
facilitate the progress of humanity. ” The Section for Benev-
olence was to occupy itself : “ 1st, with the foundation of
hospitals (as though Chili needed hospitals) ; 2d, with aid-
ing directly or indirectly all such institutions when they do
not pursue egoistic and sectarian objects (that is, when they
are not Catholic). ”... The Section for Propaganda was
to : “ 1st, defend and make known the veritable sentiments
of Freemasonry (then why not abolish “ the secret ” ?) ; 2d,
to try to introduce into all public institutions the principles
of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity ; and especially to labor
for a separation of Church and state, for the establishment of
Civil Marriage (1), for the abolition of all privileges, for the

(1) Civil marriage, with its necessary consequence of divorce ad lihitum and ttv; ultt-

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secularization of all charities (so as to provide fat salaries:
for the distributors, attendants, etc.) ; 3d, for the help of all
victims of religious intolerance” In spite of the efforts of
the English and German residents in Chili, this Masonic
programme failed ; but in 1881 the Masonic Chains dH Union
(p. 437) encouraged the Brethren with this information :
“ Brother Jose Vergara, Minister of the Interior, has been
chosen Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Chili. We
cannot doubt that, under the direction of this eminent
Brother, the Chilian Lodges will recover all their activity,
which is now so repressed by the clerical party. In Chili
it is really the English and German Lodges that do the
work,” Nevertheless, hitherto the sterling Catholicism of
the Chilian people has refused to accept the enlightenment
which emanates from the rays of the Dark Lantern.

Venezuela has held its own fairly well in face of Masonic
aggression, although during the three presidential terms of
Guzman Blanco (1873-1887) the Brethren continually flat-
mate destruction of the very idea of the family, is ever one of the dearest objects to the Ma-
sonic heart. Voltaire, Helvetius, d’Alembert, Roulllg d’Orfeuil and all ejusdem furfuris
insisted upon the destruction of every trace of a sacramental Idea in matrimony, and the
Constituent Assembly of 1790 actuated this theory when it proclaimed the equality of bast-
ards and legitimate children. In this Assembly Cambac£rds, the future arch -chancel lor of
Napoleon and future Grand Master of French Masonry, declared : “ There is a law which
is superior to all othera, and that law— the law of nature— tells us that illegitimate children
have all the rights which some would take from them. . . . All children, without any distinct
tlon, have the right of succession to those who have given existence to them. The differ-
ences heretofore subsisting between these classes of children are merely effects of pride and
superstition, and they are ignominious and contrary to Justice.” During the rule of the
Paris Commune of 1871, as we learn from Maxlme du Camp, in his Convulsions of Paris ,
the Central Council applauded the Citizen Gratien when, at a reunion in the Hotel de Ville,.
he thus perorated : “ If we wish to give to all an equal and a revolutionary education, we
must destroy the family. The child is not a property of a father and mother ; the child be-
longs to the State.” Ragon whose Interpretative Course was approved by the Grand
Orient of France In 1840 as “ the work of a profoundly instructed brother,” says : ” The
Indissolubility of marriage is contrary to the laws of nature and of reason — Its correct-
ive is divorce; divorce is now among our customs, waiting for the day when it will be
found among our laws. ” Louis Napoleon, in his Naptdeonic Ideas , when recounting the
mistakes of the French governments that preceded his own, numbered as one of those
errors their failure to admit the right of divorce in their Jurisprudence. Since such are
the sentiments of Masonry in regard to marriage and the family, we were not surprised
when we read In the Official Municipal Bulletin of Paris of September, 1882, that on
the preceding August 12th, at a dktributlon of prizes to the schools of the Fourteenth Aron-
dissement. Brother Schmidt, an assistant to the mayor, told the young girls that it was
the duty of French mothers ” to make their children hate that religious cosmopolitanism
which debases our earthly country beneath a hypothetical religion which is hidden some-
where in the vault of heaven,” and that children should be taught to despise “ that hu-
mility which impels a man to kneel before another who is no more infallible than him-
self.”

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tered themselves that Venezuelan Catholicism was moribund,
thanks to the poison which the Liberalism of Blanco, the
u Protector of the Masonic Order in the Republic,” allowed
them to administer to the people. Under date of March 29,
1874, the Grand Lodge of Venezuela sent “ to all the Lodges
in its jurisdiction ” a circular, the barefaced mendacity of
which has rarely been excelled in any of the documents
which, after the dagger, have ever been the chosen weapons
of South American Masonry in its campaigns of “ popular in-
struction.” We shall quote a few gems from this official
pronouncement “ Having been called to regenerate* Ven-
ezuela, and being filled with faith in the principles of Ma-
sonry, Brother Guzman Blanco has resolved to take the Ma-
sonry of Venezuela as his co-operatrix, and he presents him-
self as its declared and decided protector. . . . The Grand
Lodge regards as enemies of Masonry all who make war on
Masonic associations ; all who do not respect the dignity of
the country ; all who try to suffocate the reason of man ; all
who try to dominate by means of ignorance ; all ivho foment
fanaticism and superstition . . . . Masonry holds that truth
rests on science, and on science alone; Masonry repels
absolutely all fanaticism and superstition, warring on them
inexorably by means of instruction. . . . He is not a true
Freemason who does not support the government which repre-
sents the people of Venezuela in the combat against the preten-
sions of the Vatican to a sovereignty on Venetian soil — a sover-
eignty which would be superior to that of the Venezuelans
themselves. The question is as to whether Venezuela is
bound to receive the inspirations of the Vatican — of that pow-
er which recently ordered its representative in Paris to see
that in all the churches of France prayers were addressed to
the Supreme Being for the ruin of the Republic and the restor-
ation of the Monarchy ; of that power which has always
insisted on ignorance as the principal support of the Holy
See and of all thrones. . . . You perceive hoiv detrimental to all
its servants this influence of the Vatican must be, since it leads
themi, to the most criminial perjury . . . . The great majority of
Freemasons are faithful Christians , fulfilling all the duties
which the Church imposes on them, although they do not re -

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nounce the exercise of their reason , since that reason is sacred
to them, being an emanation from the Supreme Being. . . . Dur-
ing many centuries the Church of Rome prevented the diffusion
of knowledge , and punished as heretics all who penetrated the
secrets of nature, and revealed those secrets to other men.
During many centuries the Church of Rome denounced the
education of the masses as prejudicial to both ecclesiastical
and civil tyranny ; and the Holy See appealed to all sov-
ereigns, in the name of their own existence, to combat liber-
al principles. . . . Against this injustice Masonry has fought
from the first days of its existence, and the hour has now
a truck for all our Brethren to work for the manifestation of
truth in its entirety.” With the President of the Republic
{we should say, its dictator) as the gracious Protector of Ven-
ezuelan Masonry, it is not strange that the Venezuelan peo-
ple were afflicted, during the entire period of their suffering
under the incubus of Guzman Blanco, with laws which
4i manifested (Masonic travesty of) truth in its entirety ” ;
and that the usual Masonic persecution of the clergy became
the order of the day. Only one of the Venezuelan bishops
was derelict. Mgr. Guebara, archbishop of Caracas, having
refused to swear fidelity to the Masonico-Febronian enact-
ments, was exiled, and his see was offered to the bishop of
Guayana, an aged, weak, but ambitious prelate, who signified
his willingness to commit spiritual bigamy. Pope Pius IX.,
under date of July 8, 1874, wrote to the unfortunate man a
strong but fatherly reproof, dwelling on the wickedness of
the new laws to which the bishop of Guayana had sworn
fidelity, and stigmatizing the hypocrisy with which the weak-
ling had assured the Holy See that “ he would have liked to
refuse the archiepiscopal dignity on account of his age and
feebleness.” — “ One fact modifies our grief,” said the Pontiff ;
“ you have not yet consummated the proposed usurpation ;
you have caused a great scandal, but you have not yet become
formally an intruder. You remind us that you are an old man.
Think, therefore, of the judgment which you must soon un-
dergo. What will you reply to Jesus Christ, when He de-
mands an account of your stewardship and upbraids you for
having rended His seamless garment ? . . . Dignities, wealth,

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the favor of the powerful, form a vain paraphernalia which
will soon be taken from you ; reflect on the punishment that
awaits you, if you persist in preparing the way for schism
and apostasy. . . . Hasten, venerable brother, by a public
and immediate retractation of your wicked oath, to remove the
stumbling-block of scandal which you have placed in the path
of the faithful ; hasten to redeem your lamentable weakness
by an apostolic firmness of soul and by an intrepid defense of
the rights of the Church.”

Peru has suffered much anxiety because of the intrigues
of Masonry, supported by the funds at the disposal of the
so-called “ missionary ” bodies which are so plentifully en-
dowed by gullible Protestants in the United States ; but of
open persecution Peru has experienced but little. During
the first years of the pontificate of Pius IX., the Masons
-endeavored to incite a war with the Holy See on the subject
of episcopal and parochial appointments ; but in 1874 the
Pontiff checkmated the Brethren by according to the pres-
idents of Peru the right of patronage which his predecessors
had granted, in the olden time, to the kings of Spain : “ Pius,
Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, for the imperishable
remembrance of this matter : Among the singular favors
which God has conferred on the Peruvian nation, none is so
striking as the gift of Catholic truth which the Peruvians
have carefully preserved from the day when they first re-
ceived it from the preachers of the Gospel, and which they
have cultivated so well that from among them have risen
several heroes whom the Church has regarded as worthy of
the honors of her altars. ... To this zeal in preserving
Catholic unity have been added many other acts performed
by the governmental authority. Thus the endowments of
dioceses already existing have been liberally augmented, and
those of new dioceses have been readily accorded ; aid has
been given to the seminaries, and to the colleges which
missionaries have founded for the propagation of the faith ;
similar generosity has been exhibited in providing for the
diffusion of sound doctrine by the endowment of parishes
among those (savages) who have been converted to the faith ;
and finally, considerable sums have been expended in the

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restoration and ornamentation of old churches, and in the
erection of new ones. . . . Wherefore, wishing to condescend
to the prayers which the Peruvian government has addressed
to us through its representative, and following the example
of our predecessors who have ever granted special favors to
those who have deserved well of Christendom, we have re-
solved, after consultation with certain cardinals of the Holy
Roman Church, to concede by our Apostolic authority that
hereafter the President of the Republic of Peru, and his
successors, shall enjoy that right of patronage which, by the
favor of the Apostolic See, the kings of Spain enjoyed in
Peru before that country was separated from the rule of the
Spanish crown. . . . The President of the Republic of Peru,
and his successors, shall enjoy the right of presenting to the
Apostolic See, whenever an archiepiscopal or episcopal see
is vacant, the names of certain fit and worthy ecclesiastics ;
so that, according to the regulations prescribed by the Holy
Canons, the canonical institution may be effected. . . . Never-
theless, the candidates thus presented shall enjoy no right
of episcopal administration, until they shall have received
the Apostolic Letters conferring their institution. . . . The
said President shall also enjoy the right of presentation to
canonicates de officio , and to parishes, providing that the
canonical regulations concerning concur ms and examination
shall have been observed. . . . Finally, the Presidents of
Peru shall receive, in all the churches of the Republic, the
same honors which were formerly accorded to the kings of
Spain, because of the right of patronage which was granted
by this Holy See.” Hitherto the exercise of this right of
patronage seems to have prevented any extraordinary mani-
festations, on the part of the Peruvian government, of greed
for ecclesiastical property, or of jealousy of ecclesiastical
privileges.

At the present moment, no country of Latin America is so
subjected to the nefarious influences of Masonry as is our
neighbor, the Republic of Mexico. In 1867, the Freemason s
Journal of Leipsic published a correspondence from this
sectary-ridden land, which ascribed to the votaries of the
Dark Lantern the “ credit ” of all the revolutions which have

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cursed the country ever since the “ yoke ” of Spain was
discarded (1). In fact, the Masonic writer gave a mere
paraphrase of the report “On the Form of Government
which Mexico Ought to Adopt,” which was accepted by the
Assembly of Notables which undertook, in 1863, to give to
their country some semblance of a stable and Christian
government (2). Whatever may be our opinion concerning
French intervention in the affairs of Mexico, or concerning
the weak scion of the Hapsburgs who vacillated between the
conservatives and the “ liberals ” until resolution was of no
use, who condescended to humor Masonry by signing a
Concordat which the Holy See was obliged to condemn, — it
is certain that the Assembly of Notables represented all
that was respectable in Mexico, both for morality and for
education. The solemn utterances of such a body, spoken
in the face of expectant America and Europe, are worthy of
attention. Alluding to the separation from the mother
country, the notables insisted that “ if, at that time, Mexico
had not forgotten her ancient institutions, undoubtedly she
would have reached the height of prosperity ; but she knew
not how to profit by her emancipation, and she abused her
independence.” The Federal Constitution, “ an imperfect
imitation of that of the United States,” contended the
notables, “ proved to be the ruin of Mexico ” ; but the evil
was increased and confirmed “ by the establishment of Ma-
sonic Lodges ” — those of the Scotch Rite and of the Rite of;
York. “ These secret societies, by their conspiracies, and by
means of poison and the dagger, decided the destiny of the^
country, and played with the lives of the citizens.” It was be-
cause of the inspiration of the Lodges, declared the notables,
that in 1828 the city of Mexico beheld the governmental au-
thorities supervising the pillage of the Grand Bazaar, sanc-
tioning attacks against private property. “ From the Lodges
came the iniquitous laws of banishment decreed against all
persons of Spanish birth ” ; laws which affected so many inno-
cent persons, which destroyed commerce by banishing capital,
and which ended in the public sale of exemptions from the

(1) This correspondence was reproduced In Le Monde of July 14, 1867.

(2) TbH report was published In the Paris Moniteur of 8ept. 13, 1863,

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decree of exile. “ The highest positions in the republic are
frequently occupied by common highwaymen. The public
treasury is constantly depleted. The property of the Church
is wickedly confiscated, and with no profit to the country.”
With the fall of Maximilian came dark days indeed for the
Catholics of Mexico ; but not until November 24, 1874, was
the “ Separation of Church and State ” effected in a manner
which was calculated to satisfy Masonry while it waits for
the moment when it will be able, as it fondly trusts, to sweep
from Mexican soil the last trace of Catholicism. By the
new law, which has hitherto been inexorably enforced, no
officer of the government (civil or military), no body of
troops, no corporation of any kind, can assist officially at any
religious service. No holidays, save the purely civil, are
recognized by the State ; but “ Sunday may be observed as
a day of rest from labor.” All religious instruction and all
acts of religious worship are prohibited in every establish-
ment of the State. “ No act of worship or of a religious
nature can be performed outside of the churches, under pain
of a fine of from 10 to 200 piastres, or of imprisonment for
from two to fifteen days. A fine of from 100 to 200 piastres
is incurred by an ecclesiastic every time that he appears in
public (outside a church) in an ecclesiastical dress, or with
any insignia of his office. All services in the churches are
to be constantly under the eyes of the police.” No religious
institution can acquire real estate or capital which is de-
rived from real estate. By the nineteenth article of this law
even the Sisters of Charity were attacked ; they were forbid-
den to wear any distinctive costume, or to live in community (1).

il) in Feb., 1899, we learned that the Congress of the United States of Columbia had
recently so far abjured connection with Masonry as to officially proclaim the Supreme
Sovereignty of Our Lord Jesus Christ. May the spirit of Garcia Moreno continue to animate
the lawgivers of the land in which Bolivar could discern no germ of political salvation !
The decree of the Columbian Congress reads as follows : “ Article 1. The Republic of
Columbia, at the termination of the century in which it achieved its national freedom and
sovereignty, but fulfils its duty in recognizing in an explicit manner the divine and social
authority of Jesus Christ and in rendering thanks to Bim for the benefits it has received
from His hands : and by means of the medium of this law so attests. Article 2. In testi-
mony of this acknowledgment, a monument shall be erected in the Cathedral of Bogota
with ecclesiastical permission.” By way of counterbalance to the consolation experienced
because of this decree, we read in the Chicago Record of Aug. 8, 1899, the following
illustration of the monumental ignorance of our Protestant countrymen concerning
affairs in Latin America. Mr. Curtis, a staff correspondent of the Record , thus speaks

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THE CLERICAL VICTTM8 OF THE CUMMUNE OF 1871. 86

CHAPTER in.

THE CLERICAL VICTIMS OF THE COMMUNE OF 1871-

When the last act of the Franco-German war of 1870-
71 had closed, and Paris, conquered by famine, had agreed
on an armistice with the Teuton on Jan. 29, 1871, a National
Assembly, elected on Feb. 8, entrusted the executive power
to Thiers, with the understanding that peace was to be se-
cured. When the harsh conditions had been accepted by
the Assembly, and the Germans had retired to the districts-
which they were to occupy until France would have paid the
last sou of the five milliards of francs by way of indemnity,
the new government fixed its seat at Versailles, in order to
be free from the danger of a coup de main on the part of
the revolutionists, native and foreign, with whom the capi-
tal was thronged. The wonted buoyancy and energy of
the French soon renewed the march of commercial and
industrial activity, and the outer world was congratulating
the sorely-tried nation on its new lease of prosperity, when
it was afflicted by an insurrection which reminded humanity
of the horrors with which, in 1793, the first acclaimers of
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, signalized their accession
to power. The government had made the grievous mis-
take of not disarming the National Guard ; and the dominant
revolutionary element in that body waited for an occasion
to challenge the comparatively conservative power of Ver-
sailles. This occasion was furnished when Thiers ordered
the removal of certain cannons to the arsenals. The mob-
arose ; some of the troops fraternized with the new sans-
culottes ; Generals Lecomte and Thomas were murdered;,

of ex-Preeident Camaano, of Equador : “ He was a devout adherent of the Church and a
believer In the ancient policy. When be came to Washington In 1880 as a delegate to the
International American conference, he brought with him a written Indulgence from the
Archbishop of Quito for all the sins he Might commit for twelve years. This extra-
ordinary advantage over the rest of mankind was given os a reward for his devotion,
to the Church , and was much envied by the delegates from other countries.**1

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and Tliiers, not wishing to deluge the streets of Paris with
fraternal blood, withdrew all the troops to Versailles, saving
only those in garrison at Mt. Valerian. Then came the pro-
clamation of the Commune, effected by men who were the
dregs, not only of France, but of Italy, Germany, Russia,
and America ; as even the arch-revolutionist, Jules Favre,
complained to the representatives of the European pow-
ers : “ All the wretches of Europe were gathered in Paris ;
the capital was the rendezvous for every wickedness on
earth ” (1). This Commune of Paris was to be the model for
all France ; the new republic was to consist of a federation of
40,000 communes ; but how different they were to be from
those mediaeval Italian republics which first rendered that
form of government historical ! A mockery of an election
was held ; and the destinies of the secular capital of civ-
ilization were entrusted to such apostles of anarchy as
Delescluze, Felix Pyat, Raoul Rigault, Vermorel, Ferre,
Courbet, etc., — men whose hatred of society was as intense
as their contempt for religion. The army at the disposal of
the Commune numbered 150,000, all well provided with mu-
nitions of every sort, including artillery ; and at the very birth
of the movement, it had obtained possession of all the forts
on the left bank of the Seine, excepting Mt. Valerien, thus fit-
ting itself with strength to withstand a long siege. The
greater part of the generals of the Commune were foreigners
— men to wrhom the designation of filibusters would have
been a fulsome flattery ; more than twenty thousand of the
same ilk were in the ranks ; the distinguishing features of
all were irreligion, immorality, pillage, and diabolical cruelty.
"When a number of citizens attempted to make a demonstra-
tion in favor of order on the Place Vendome, the troops of
the Commune dispersed them with fusilades. The Sisters
of Charity and Christian Brothers were expelled from their
schools, and persons without any conception of morality
were appointed to teach the rising generation ; of course the
crucifix was torn from the wall of every school-room, and
every mention of the name of God was prohibited. Both
public and private property were pillaged, and every form of

(1) Circular to the Foreign Ambassadors and Ministers ; June 6, 1871.

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disorder made the once beautiful capital a hell on earth.
Finally, hoping to thus escape from the vengeance of at least
human law, the Communist leaders ordered the seizure of
the archbishop of Paris, a number of clergymen, and several
eminent seculars, who were to be held as security for the
absolute pardon of such of themselves as would fall into the
power of the government of Versailles. On May 21, after
two months of regular siege, the national troops, commanded
by Marshal MacMahon, who had recovered from the wound
received at Sedan, entered Paris by the gate of Auteuil ; and
then ensued a frightful street battle during eight days and
eight nights, — no parallel to which can be found in modern
history. Already the madmen of the Commune had pulled
down the great column of Napoleon in the Place Vendome,
heedless of the fact that the Germans outside the city must
have rejoiced at the disappearance of a monument which
commemorated so many of their crushing defeats at the
hands of the French ; and now the hellhounds determined
to destroy Paris itself. While the national troops were
fighting their way, inch by inch, into the heart of the city,
organized hordes fired the Tuileries, the palace of the Min-
istry of Finance, that of the Legion of Honor, the Cour des
Comptes, the Palace of Justice, the Hotel de Ville, many mag-
azines, and entire blocks of residences. Many churches,
notably Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, and very many
celebrated monuments, had been specially marked for visi-
tation by the petroleurs and petroJeuses of every age (for even
little children were pressed into this service) ; but fortunately
the rapidity of the Versaillais advance prevented the actua-
tion of the design. Shortly before the advent of the Com-
mune, one of its coryphees, that Cluseret who afterward tried
to belittle the courage and talent of the American generals
under whom he was supposed to have learned some-
thing of the art of war, had written to his friend, Varlin, of
the Department of Finance in the Commune : “ I do not know
whether we shall ever possess Paris ; but if we do have it, we
must blow it up.” Providence had decreed that utter male-
diction should not be the lot of the city that it had chastised ;
and the homeward route was now taken by the 500,000

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citizens who had fled from the pestilential breath of the
children of the “ International.” To say nothing of the lose
of life which the short reign of the Commune cost the city of
Paris, the pecuniary damage which it entailed on the citi-
zens was thirty times greater than that which had accrued
from their resistance to the Germans ; for the indemnitiea
paid by the municipality for losses under the Commune
amounted to nearly seventy-five millions of francs, while the
losses caused by the German guns were covered by a little
over two millions (1). It is not our purpose to detail the
horrors of the Commune ; the student will expect from us no
more than a succinct narrative of the murder of Mgr. Darboy
and of the other priests who merited from heaven the same
blessing. Having given that narrative, we shall show that
Freemasonry is pre-eminently responsible for what was one
of the most salient crimes of the nineteenth century.

“ What can you do to me ? Take my furniture ? It is not
mine ; it belongs to the State. Take my books ? Well, they
are mine, and they are my dearest possessions ; but I can
do without them, and they will scarcely profit you greatly.
Take my life? If you kill me, you will not destroy the.
principle which I represent ; you will simply strengthen it.”
Such were the intrepid words which Pierre-Georges Darboy,
archbishop of Paris, addressed to the revolutionary mob
which invaded his residence after the catastrophe of Sedan ;
and content with the manifestation of their insolence, the
future Communists retired from the episcopal presence.
And w hen the insurrection of March 18, 1871, had raised
the Jacobins to power, and a band of pillagers and cutthroats,
fresh from the sacking of the School of the General Staff,
forced an entrance into his palace, the prelate calmly asked :
“ What do you desire, my friends ? My head ? Here it is.”
Again the partisans of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity re-
tired ; but in a few days all Paris knew that the Commune
had decreed the imprisonment of its archbishop. On April
4, the Tuesday of Holy Week, the prelate presided at the
weekly meeting of his council ; and when the business had
been transacted, he remarked : “ Whenever, ttfter our sessions,

(1) 8ee the Report of the Prefect of Police, in the Ami dit PeupU, May 25, 1872.

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THE CLERICAL VICTIMS OF THE COMMUNE OF 1871. 89^

we have been about to separate, gentlemen, I have always
said : ‘ We shall meet next week, if we are still here below.’
To-day I may repeat the proviso with more earnestness
than I have heretofore felt.” The words were scarcely ut-
tered, when two officers of the Commune appeared in the
room, and one, a captain named Revol, shouted to the arcli-
j bishop : “ Follow us ; you must answer for a volley of mus-
ketry that has just been fired on one of our patrols from the
house of the Jesuits.” Accompanied by his vicar-general,
the Abbe Legarde, the destined martyr was conducted to the
Prefecture of Police, where, as His Grace afterward narrated
in his prison, the following “ interrogatory ” was held.
“ For more than eighteen hundred years,” growled Raoul
Rigault, the procurator of the Commune, “you people have
been crushing freedom of thought in the name of Jesus Christ
Now the turn of free thought has come.” Then the arch-
bishop learned that he was charged with having “ mon-
opolized ” the property of the people. “ What property ? ”
asked the prelate. “ The churches,. man ! ” replied the pro-
curator ; “ the ornaments, the vases, and all that” Then
Rigault made out the form of commitment, designating the
prisoner as “ ex-archbishop of Paris.” Mgr. Darboy refused
to recognize the qualification by appending, as was custom-
ary, his signature to the document. “You can no more
unmake an archbishop,” he insisted, “than you can make
one. Even though I were in Pekin, I would still be arch-
bishop of Paris ; therefore forty Communes can never make
me sign that paper.” Then the prefect erased the obnoxious
term, and substituted “Mr. Darboy, who styles himself arch-
bishop of Paris.” On the night of Holy Thursday our pre-
late was transferred to the prison of Mazas, where he was
destined to remain for forty-six days. A few days after the
arrest, Dr. Demarquay, a surgeon whose devotion to the
soldiers had won for him such loye as the Communists were
capable of cherishing, appealed to Rigault for the freedom
of the archbishop ; but the savage replied : “ Impossible,
citizen-doctor ! The criterium of our revolution is * Death
to the priests ! ’ ” And when the surgeon persisted, Rigault
cried : “ Enough ! I know you to be an excellent physician ;;

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but if you continue to interest yourself in these rascals, I
shall have you shot ” (1).

Visiting his archbishop one day atMazas, the Abbe Bay le
remarked that if His Grace was put to death by the Commune,
he would be regarded as a martyr ; that the Church had
proclaimed St. Thomas of Canterbury a martyr, and there
was as much of politics in the case of the English prelate as
in that of His Grace of Paris. “One thing is certain,”
replied Mgr. Darboy ; “ If I am condemned, it will not be
as an individual, but as archbishop of Paris.” But the
Commune pretended that our prelate, and also all the other
“ hostages ” who were arrested at the same time, were to be
executed in retaliation for alleged massacres of Communist
prisoners taken by the national forces. This calumny was re-
peated by the Judaeo-Masonic press of all Europe; and
re-echoed by nearly all the secular and Protestant journals of
America, ever ready to palliate, if not to justify, the crimes of
the priest-eaters. When our archbishop was informed of this
atrocious invention of the Commune, he wrote a letter to
Thiers, protesting against the execution of Communist
prisoners, if such execution had occurred. The Commune
allowed the letter to be carried to its destination by one of
the priestly hostages, the Abbe Bertaux, cure of Saint-Pierre
de Montmartre, on condition that the messenger would re-
turn to his cell and to his probable death. Bertaux was
faithful to his promise (2), and brought the reply of Thiers,
which declared most solemnly that the accusation of the'
Commune was “ absolutely false ” (3). Of course the Official

(1) Lamazou ; The Place Vendome and La Roquette. Paris, 1880.

(2; Tbe Abbe Bertaux owed bis escape from death at the bands of the Commune to the
efforts of Mile, le Marasquier, a simple but valiant dressmaker whom the abbd bad ed-
ucated. Alone and with no other protection than that of heaven, she ventured to appeal to
Rlgault; and either by her eloquence, or by her modest assurance, or by force of
her beauty, she obtained the freedom of her friend. Shortly afterward, however, the abb<5
died from the effects of his imprisonment. Ravailhe ; A Week of the Commune of Paris.
Paris. 1880.

(3) We subjoin this correspondence. The letter of Mgr. Darboy, dated at Mazas, April 8,
is as follows : “ Mr. President, yesterday, after an interrogatory in this my prison at
Mazas, my questioners assured me that in the recent combats tbe national troops had
committed acts of barbarity on tbe National Guards (the Communist forces) ; that wound-
ed men were killed, and prisoners massacred. And when I hesitated to credit
these assertions, I was told that they were based on official information*
Therefore I wish, Mr. President, to draw your attention to a matter of grave moment
which perhaps is unknown to you, and to beg you to see what can be done in such la-

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Journal of the Commute published neither the letter of Mgr.
Darboy, nor that of Thiers — an abstention which may have
been an excuse for the silence of the sympathizing journals
of foreign lands. On April 18, Mr. Washburne, Minister of
the United States of America to France, received the follow-
ing note from Archbishop Chigi, the papal nuncio, who,
like all the other ambassadors and ministers to France,
Mr. Washburne alone excepted, then resided at Versailles,
the seat of the legitimate government of the republic (1) :
“ My dear colleague, allow me to ask you in confidence to
receive kindly the four canons, ecclesiastics of the metro-
politan church of Paris, who will call upon you in order to
entreat you to protect their archbishop who is now impris-
oned by the insurgents of Paris. Permit me to join my
prayer to that of these good priests, and to assure you of
my gratitude for all that you may feel yourself able to at-
tempt for the preservation of the life of Mgr. Darboy.”
Mr. Washburne accordingly waited on Cluseret, then Min-
ister of War for the Commune. In his recital of his experi-
ences during the Commune, Mr. Washburne tells us that
Cluseret expressed his sympathy for the archbishop (?) ; but
at the same time, said the Communist, so great was the ex-
asperation of the Parisians at that time, that no one would

mentable circumstances. . . .No one can find fault witb me for interceding with those who
can moderate or terminate the present contest. Humanity, religion, both counsel and com-
mand my interference ; but I can interfere only by supplication, and I do address you with
confidence. My prayer goes forth from a heart which has pitied many miseries during the
last few months ; it goes forth from a French heart which bleeds on account of my suffer-
ing country ; it goes forth from a priestly and episcopal heart which is ready for every sac-
rifice. even for that of life, in favor of those whom God has given to me as compatriots and
diocesans. I conjure you, Mr. President, to use all your Influence to terminate our civil
war ; and at any rate, to moderate its features to the utmost of your power.” The reply
of Thiers, dated at Versailles, April U, is as follows : ” My Lord, I have received the let-
ter which you sent me by the hands of the curl of Montmartre ; and I hasten to reply with
that sincerity which I shall ever practice. The assertions mentioned by you are absolute-
ly false ; and I am astonished that so enlightened a prelate as yourself. My Lord, could have
given any credence to them even for one Instant. Our army has never committed, and
never will commit, the hideous crimes which are Imputed to it by men who either are con-
scious calumniators, or are blinded by the atmosphere of mendacity surrounding them. . . .

I repel these calumnies. My Lord ; I declare that our soldiers have killed no prisoners.

. . . Receive, My Lord, the expression of my respect, and of my grief because of your be-
ing a victim of that system of hostages which is borrowed from the Terror.” Guillkrmix ;
Life of Mgr. Darb*m , Put to Death in Hatred of the Faith. Paris, 1838.

(1) Mr. Washburne bad transferred his legation to Versailles, placing it in charge of
Mr. Hoffman, his secretary. His reason for remaining In Paris was found iu the many
American interests then in the capital.

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8TUDIE8 IN CHURCH HISTORY.

dare to propose the liberation of the prelate. The Ameri-
can protested against “ the barbarity of imprisoning a man*
like the archbishop who was accused of no crime, and of
allowing no friend to go near him.” Then Mr. Washburne
demanded permission to visit the prelate, to inquire into
his needs, and to provide for them. The result of this ac-
tion of Mr. Washburne was a permission accorded by Ri-
gault for the Minister “ to communicate with Citizen Darboy,
archbishop of Paris.” This privilege was accorded in the
morning of April 23, and Mr. Washburne immediately re-
paired to Mazas. He found the prelate unshaved, haggard
from sickness, but cheerful and prepared for the imminent
catastrophe. Not a word of bitterness did the archbishop
utter against his persecutors ; on the contrary, writes the
Minister, he implied that they were not as bad as some
painted them. He said that he awaited patiently “ the logic
of events.” Mr. Washburne observes that his visit was
the first that Mgr. Darboy had been allowed to receive since
his incarceration. When the Minister had departed, the
archbishop wrote a letter which he enclosed in another to
Mr. Washburne, thanking him for his visit, and requesting
him “ to send the accompanying missive to its destination by
means of his secretary, who was going to Versailles. The
address of the person to whom it is written will be furnished
by His Excellency the apostolic nuncio, or by the bishop of
Versailles. If the indicated person has already left Ver-
sailles for Paris, the secretary of the American Minister
will please destroy the letter, or bring it back to me when lie-
returns to Paris.” This important letter was meant for the
Abbe Lagarde, vicar-general of the archbishop ; and it was
connected with a matter which sheds much light on the
identity of those who, after the Masonic conspirators of
Paris, were responsible for the murder of the hostages. It
ordered the vicar-general to return immediately to Mazas,
“no matter what was the state of the negotiations with
which he had been charged” ; and it complained that “ ten
days were more than sufficient to enable the government (of
Thiers) to decide whether it would agree to the proposed
exchange. The delay, added the prelate, “ compromised him

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THE CLERICAL VICTIMS OP THE COMMUNE OF 1871.

seriously, and might entail fatal consequences.” The reader
must know that on March 19, the ideal coryphee of the Com-
mune, the iufamous Blanqui, had fallen into the hands of the
Versaillais ; and that a month afterward the Communist lead-
ers had offered to exchange him for the archbishop and four
other hostages (1). Thiers had submitted the Blanqui mat-
ter to his ministers, and the offer of exchange had been re-
jected. Writing to Mr. Washburne on May 12, the nuncio
says that Thiers “ had declared that although he would like
to see the archbishop and the Abbe Deguerry (the cure of
the Madeleine) restored to liberty, he could not assume the
responsibility of exchange. He added that Blanqui was to
be judged again, and that if a sentence of death was passed,
the president might commute it ; but that it was beyond his
power to grant the liberty of the prisoner, especially before
the trial. This reply to Mgr. Darboy was reduced to writing
three weeks ago, and the Abbe Lagarde was requested to
•carry it to His Grace, sealed as it was ; but the vicar-general
postively refused to carry it in that condition, saying that he
could not bear a sealed reply to a letter which he had
brought unsealed. Therefore the reply of M. Thiers is
still in the office of the Minister of Worship ; they will not
send it by any other than the Abbe Lagarde, and he will not
lake charge of it. M. Thiers assures me that there is no
danger to the lives of the archbishop and the other eccle-
siastics ; but I do not share his confidence on that point.” On
May 10, not knowing the state of the negotiations with
Thiers in reference to an exchange, Mr. Washburne sug-
gested to the archbishop that he should write to the presi-

(1) On this occasion Mgr. Darboy wrote to Thiers the following letter: “ Mr. President,
I have the honor to lay before you a communication which I received last evening, and I
ask you to accord it the immediate attention which your humanity and wisdom will deem
appropriate. A man of great influence, one who is bound by political ties and by an an-
cient friendship to M. Blanqui, is endeavoring to effect his liberation. For this purpose he
has submitted to the commissioners the following arrangement. If M. Blanqui is freed,
liberty will be accorded to the archbishop of Paris, to his sister, to the president Bonjean,
to the cur A of the Madeleine, and to the Abb£ Lagarde, vicar-general of Paris, the bearer
of this letter. The proposition has been accepted (by the Commune), and I have been
asked to recommend its acceptance by you. Although my interests are Involved in the mat-
ter, I venture to submit it to your favorable consideration. Now that there exist too
many causes of dissension among us, and since there is presented an occasion for a com-
promise which regards persons and not principles, would it not be well to thus contribute
to peace ? ”

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94 STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

•

dent an argument for the compromise. The prelate accord-
ingly drew up a “ Memorandum ” based on the dictates of
prudence and of common sense, from which we extract the fol-
lowing passage : “ The present question is not one between the
government and the Commune ; it is between the government
and the above-mentioned persons (the intermediaries).
These latter have agreed that freedom shall be granted to
the archbishop, and to four or five other prisoners — to be
designated by M. Thiers — if the release of M. Blanqui is as-
sured ; and this assurance is to be guaranteed by the Minis-
ter of the United States, authorized thereunto by M. Thiers.
In regard to the liberation of M. Blanqui, would it not be
feasible, instead of ordering it officially, to furnish him
with the means of escaping, it being, of course, understood
that he will not be again molested, unless he should com-
mit some new crime. By such a procedure the government
would avoid official relations with the Commune.” Through
the intermediary of the American Minister, this “ Mem-
orandum,” and accompanying letters from the archbishop
and the Abbe Deguerry, were received by Archbishop Chigi,
and by him were delivered to Thiers ; but they effected no
change in the mind of the president, and the nuncio so in-
formed Mr. Washburne, conveying to him at the same time,
conformably to the orders of Cardinal Antonelli, “the heart-
felt thanks of the Holy Father for all that he had done, and
all that he had wished to effect, in favor of the unjustly afflict-
ed archbishop.” On May 19, Mr. Washburne again visited
the illustrious victim, and informed him of the failure of the
negotiations. He found the prelate suffering from an
attack of pleurisy ; but good humor and resignation still
neutralized the poverty of the miserable cell.

Various judgments have been emitted by competent
and unbiassed minds in regard to the conduct of Thiers in
this matter. It seems certain that Mgr. Darboy himself
charged the president, rather than the Commune, with the
guilt of his murder. An officer of the Commune who assist-
ed at the execution, if we are to believe the Abbe Moreau (1),
told the Abbe Crozes that at the very moment of the*

(l) Moreau ; Recollections of (he Little and the Great Roquette. Paris, 1882.

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catastrophe, the archbishop remarked to M. Bon jean, point-
ing to the Communist soldiers: “Those men are not the
most guilty ; Thiers is the culprit.” General Ambert after-
ward wrote: “The first duty of the government was to
protect the lives of the priests. It should have accepted all
the exchanges proposed. We were assured that we would
have the last word, and we needed to fear no consequences.
Under various pretexts the clergy were abandoned to the
Commune ” (1). Maxime du Camp says : “ All was in vain ;
there was an obstinacy which the event showed to be
culpable. The head of the government insisted that lie
could not parley with the insurgents, and that besides, the
lives of the hostages were in no danger — an opinion which
was not shared by either IVfgr. Chigi or Mr. Washburne.
The dismissal of Blanqui would have added no new peri la
to the situation ; he would have been merely one fool the
more in the Hotel de Yille which was already a madhouse ” (2).
And Emile Ollivier opined : “ The release of Blanqui
would not have augmented the forces of the insurrection.
There was no question of a negotiation between a regular
government and a horde of bandits — a thing which could not
be considered ; Mr. Washburne would simply have taken
Blanqui into his carriage, and would have returned with
the archbishop. Thiers, with an inexplicable hardness of
heart, refused to allow this arrangement ; in spite of all the
representations of Mgr. Chigi and of Mr. Washburne, he
affected to believe that Mgr. Darboy was in no danger ” (3).

“Do not reject the Cross!” Archbishop Darboy had
written in one of his admirable works : “ It is the mystery
of salvation. If you have not the courage to seek it, at
least accept it when it is sent to you. You will find happi-
ness in it By sheer force of gazing on it, you will under-
stand it ; if you carry it, you will love it ; and loving it, you
will find Jesus Christ To find Jesus Christ is to find a joy
which neutralizes every sorrow ; a consolation which assuages
every pain ; a treasure which recompenses for all misery ; a

(1) Heroism in Soutane. Paris. 1876.

(2) The Convulsions of Paris . Paris, 1882.

(3) The Church and the State at the Vatican Council. Paris, 1878.

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source of bliss which destroys all capability of suffering ” (1).
And when, on the evening of May 22, the prelate and the
other hostages had been transferred to the prison of La Ro-
quette, he drew a representation of the cross and the other
instruments of the Passiou on the door of his cell, inscrib-
ing underneath : “ Robur mentis virisalus — Jesus crucified ;
behold the ‘strength of the soul, the salvation of man’ ” (2).
On May 23 and 24, His Grace enjoyed, for the first time
since his arrest, the company of his priestly companions ;
and when the physician of the prison proposed to effect his
Temoval to the infirmary, adding that perhaps he would then
be in less danger, he begged to be leit with his brethren.
On May 24, Father Olivaint carried the Blessed Eucharist
to the archbishop, and the other priests communicated each
other. As only a very few of the Sacred Particles could be
smuggled into the prison, the lay hostages perforce contented
themselves with Spiritual Communion (3). Meanwhile, the
mob of Paris, furious because of the continued triumphs of
the National army, were clamoring for vengeance on the
hostages. The leaders of the Commune had abandoned the
Hotel de Ville, and such of them as did not flee from the
city — Delescluze, Ranvier, Ferre, etc. — readily gave the or-
der for the massacre of six of the condemned. At half-past
seven in the evening, the noise of a platoon grounding arms
was heard at the door of La Roquette ; and a rough voice ex-
claimed : “ Attention, citizens ! Let each one of you answer
to his name ! Citizen Darboy ! ” The archbishop calmly re-
plied : “ Present ” ; his door was unlocked, and he confronted

(1) Reflections on the Imitation of Christ , Bk. HI., ch. 66. Paris, 1852.

(2) Du Camp ; loc. cit., i., p. 821.

(8) From the first day of their arrest the hostages had been forbidden to hold any relig-
ious exercises ; but while this prohibition debarred the priests from a celebration of the
Mass, it did not prevent several of them from confessing. At length the devotion of a
pious heroine. Mile. Delmas, directress of the Home for Abandoned Children, procured
for the destined martyrs the Bread of the Soul. Having heard of their need. Mile. Delmas
obtained permission to augment their starvation rations by a gift of some fresh rolls ; and
in one of these a priest found a paper, on which was written : “ Courage. ! To-morrow you
will receive the Supreme Consolation. You will receive a pitcher of cream, and at the
bottom of the pitcher you will find what you desire.11 On May 16, the pious ingenuity of
the maiden succeeded for the first time. She had unfolded her design to a priest, and
had received from him a tin box, hermetically sealed, and containing several consecrated
Hosts ; and she consigned the precious gift, hidden in the cream, to the hands of Father
Ducoudray, who had been summoned to receive the ’vfreshments.

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his assassins. Then the same scene was enacted successively
at the cells of President Bonjean, the Abbe Deguerry, the
Jesuits Clerc and Ducoudray, and the Abbe Allard. When
all the victims were assembled, the archbishop prayed on
his knees for a moment, and then gave his blessing to his
companions. The order to march was given ; and amid the
howlings and blasphemies of a mob which the Communist
guards did not pretend to repress, the road to the place of
execution was traversed. At one moment of the journey,
Mgr. Darboy, whose sickness had rendered him very weak,
began to walk rather slowly ; and one of the guards clubbed
him with the butt-end of his musket so severely, that only
the arm of M. Bonjean saved him from falling to the ground.
Finally the fatal spot was reached ; and while the priests
were giving the last absolution to each other, the guards
hurried them into line. There was one volley from a
platoon ; then some isolated shots ; and the sacrifice was con-
summated— another instance of the degree of blind ferocity
to which men may degrade themselves, when they bid fare-
well to every sentiment of religion. Mgr. Darboy was
assassinated in the name of liberty ; and on his way to death,
among the insults which were hurled at him, he heard in-
sensate invocations of that frequently prostituted bless-
ing. Well did he reply : “ Do not profane that word! We
are the friends of liberty ; we*who die for the faith and for
liberty.” From among the many orations which this sad
but glorious event occasioned in Christendom, we sub-
mit to the reader the following reflections by Mgr. (after-
ward Cardinal) Pie, bishop of Poitiers : “ When popular fury
fell, in other times, on men of the sanctuary, a pretext for
that fury might have been found in the fact that those men
were involved in the social dissensions of their day. For
instance, when, iu the Middle Age, Gualderic, bishop of
Laon, was murdered by rebels to the cry of ‘ The Commune ! ’
an explanation — not an excuse — for the crime was found in
the extreme ardor displayed by the prelate in his personal
resistance to the citizens. But in this case, the victims were
of such a character that in the person of each one of them,
just as in the person of their Divine Master, were accom-

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plished the words of Scripture : ‘ Odio me habuerunt gratis /
Those humble religious, those charitable priests, had not
appeared on the battle-field or on the theatre of civil dis-
cord, unless in order to succor the wounded and assuage the
suffering of all alike ; the praise of their devotedness was
on every tongue. The archbishop never pronounced other
than words of moderation and of paternal indulgence in re-
gard to those of his children who wandered ; he ever insisted
that they were more unfortunate than culpable. . . . But
wherever human perversity intrudes itself, we can discern the
economy of the divine intentions. It was necessary that all
this carnage should be raised to the height of a sacrifice ;
and in order to have a sacrifice, a priest, a sacrificer, is neces-
sary. Listen to the beautiful words of St. Eucherius, bishop
of Lyons, as he speaks of the martyrdom of his predecessor,
St. Pothinus : ‘ Divine Providence has ordained that in the
great sacrifices of our country, a pontiff shall never be, want-
ing.’ Modern nations are daughters of Calvary ; they can be
redeemed again only by the merits of a redeeming blood.
Recently there was a question of the fate of France ; it was
necessary, therefore, that the other victims of the fold should
be joined by him who offered daily the sacrifice of the Body
of the Saviour, and that having been dragged before profane
tribunals, he should offer a new sacrifice to Christ in his
own person. . . . And since all were murdered in hatred of
God and of Christian truth, as the accusers and assassins
declared without equivocation ; and since the victims offered
the homage of their lives to God and Jesus Christ ; all
arose with the same palm in their hands, and with the same
crown on their brows.”

The next clerical victims of the Commune were the Do-
minicans of Arcueil. For several years the College of Albert-
le-Grand, conducted by the Teaching Third Order of St
Dominic which had been founded by Father Francois-Eugene
Captier at the instigation of Lacordaire, had enjoyed a reputa-
tion inferior to that of no French institution of secondary
education. Three hundred students were being trained in
the ways of science and religion ; in the paths of good
citizenship for France, and in those which lead to man’s.

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eternal happiness; when the war with Germany caused
Father Captier, then the prior of Arcueil, to dismiss his
students, and to offer his college as a military hospital to
the government Three of his Dominican professors joined
the armies in the field as nurses, while the others remained
at Arcueil as aggregates to the General Society for Aid
to the Wounded. During the siege of Paris, these Domini-
cans of Arcueil received and nursed over twelve hundred of
their wounded countrymen, rivalling even the Brothers of
the Christian Schools, whose heroism and patience amid the
woes of the capital excited the admiration of infidel as well
as Christian. Studies were resumed at Arcueil when the
German war had terminated ; but the advent of the Com-
mune again suspended the courses, and once more the zeal
of the Dominicans was directed to a mitigation of the evils
of war. The insurrection had entered on its third month
of rapine and slaughter, when a battalion of Communists
fixed its quarters in the chateau of the Marquis de la Place,
adjoining the College of Albert-le-Grand. On May 17, the
chateau, which had been transformed into a hell of baccha-
nalia rather than into a barrack, butst into flames ; and the.
colonel, one Serisier, a drunken journeyman-currier, pro-
claimed that the fire must have been caused by Versaillais
agents, and that none other than the Dominicans of the col-
lege could have been those agents. On May 19, two battalions
surrounded the college; and Serisier, accompanied by a
Prussian named Thaller and two other Communist officers,
forced their way to the presence of Father Captier, announc-
ing the arrest of the entire community. Summoning to his
side all of his fellow-Dominicans, the auxiliary professors,,
the Sisters of St. Martha who had charge of the domestic
arrangements of the institution, the lay servants, and the
few students who had chosen to remain in the college to
aid in caring for the Communist wounded, the prior thus
addressed these last : “ My sons, you perceive what awaits .
you. You will be interrogated ; but you will certainly reply
with the same sincerity that you would use toward your
parents. Remember what your parents recommended to
you when they confided you to our care ; and whatever may

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happen, remember that you must become men who can live
and die like Frenchmen and Christians. Farewell ! May the
blessing of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
descend upon you, and remain with you forever, forever! ”
The prisoners were soon ordered to set forth ; the Sisters
and other women were packed into the carriages and wagons
belonging to the college, and were taken to the prison of
Saint-Lazare ; they were ordered to say nothing on the
journey, to make not even a sign to the spectators of their
misery, under pain of being immediately shot. The priests,
lay professors, and male servants, were marched to the fort
of Bicetre between two detachments of soldiers ; then they
were searched and interrogated amid derisive and revoltingly
obscene outbursts on the part of the “ apostles of human-
ity ” ; and at length they were confined in a casemate, where
they remained for six days without beds and with very
little bread and water, and subjected to the continuous
insults of human demons who succeeded each other at the
window. During the night of May 24, the garrison of
Bicetre spiked the guns of the fort, and retired, having
perceived that the Nationals were advancing steadily in their
direction. The hope that this movement excited in the
minds of the prisoners was soon dissipated ; for early in
the morning of the 25th, a Communist officer ordered them
to join a column which was about to retire to Paris. When
they arrived at the Gobelins, they were kept for an hour
in a courtyard in which shells from the Nationals were fre-
quently dropping ; but as the Gobelins proved untenable,
they were conducted by their retreating guardians to the
disciplinary prison in the Avenue dTtalie. Here they met
again their original jailer, the ferocious Serisier, who start-
ed them on the road to a neighboring barricade, with a
determination to force them to fight for the Commune.
Rifles were tendered to them ; but Father Cotrault cried :
“We cannot bear arms, for not only are we priests, but wre
are neutrals, because of our status as hospitalers.” The
blasphemies of Serisier were checked by an advance of the
Nationals on the barricade ; the order to retreat to the next
barricade was given, and the Dominicans were sent back to

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THE CLERICAL VICTIMS OF THE COMMUNE OF 1871. 101

the prison in the Avenue d’ltalie. All Paris knew at this
time that in a few hours the reign of the Commune would
terminate ; but Father Captier and his companions felt that
they would stand before their Eternal Judge before the happy
moment arrived. Therefore they confessed to each other,
and serenely waited for death. At four o’clock in the after-
noon, a cry arose outside the prison that the regular army
was in sight ; and the voice of Serisier was heard crying for
“ volunteers to smash the skulls of those priests.” A row of
murderers, male and female, was immediately formed on
each side of the avenue ; and Bobeche, a thief whom the
Commune had made chief-keeper of the prison, was told to
send the victims into the street. The order was given, and
crying to his brethren “ Albns, mes amis, pour le bon Dieu!”
Father Captier moved to the door. But Father Cotrault
had already gone forth, and had fallen under the fusilade,
ere his superior succumbed. Three other Dominicans,
Fathers Bourard, Delhorme, and Chatagneret, met succes-
sively the same fate ; and they were followed on the road
to heaven by six secular employees of their college. By
some means several of the servants succeeded in escaping
into the neighboring houses (1). “ Why was it,” demands

Pellissier, “ that cruel hands dragged a religious from his
modest refuge ? How was it that men could interrupt the
work of a humble educator of youth, whose presence in the
little village of Arcueil was an honor and a benefit to all of
its inhabitants ? What was there in the austerity of re-
ligious life to provoke envy and rage ? Had the Dominicans
ever insulted the miseries of the people by their luxury
or pompousness? Did poverty, sickness, the miseries
caused by war, ever encounter more ready and presever-
ing sympathy than that displayed by these friars ? To all
these questions drunken and ferocious assassins could make
no answer ; and therefore they retorted with outrage, blows,,
and death. But to all these questions reason and morality
give a reply which we must record and remember. The

(1) Leccyer; The Martyrs of ArcueU. Paris, 1871.— Pkrraud ; Funeral Oration on
Father Captier. Paris, 1882.— Pellissier ; The Glories of ( hristian France. Paris*
18SD.— D'Arsac ; History of the Commune of 1871. Paris, 1885.

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•spirit of the Revolution is the spirit of evil ; it has a horror of
good in all its forms. Order is a good ; religious education
is a good; charity and prayer are good. Whenever the
spirit of the Revolution does not encounter the material ob-
stacle of armed force, it must destroy and murder ; it
changes its name without changing its nature, now calling
itself Jacobinism and then the Commune ; it excited a thirst
for blood equally in the Cabochians of the fourteenth cen-
tury, in the knitting-women of the guillotine, and in the
petroleusea of 1871. It profits us nothing to close our eyes
so that we may not see ; we can only fall the sooner under
the blows of the spirit of the Revolution, the devourer of
men, and the destroyer of states. Tigers are not tamed ;
they are entrapped and caged. Let us do even better.
Since God has made man a curable being, let us not wait until
rage has attained its culminating point ; let us devote our-
selves to the child who may become an honest man ;
education, Christian education by means of the priest, is the
infallible remedy for the evils from which we suffer — from
which perhaps France will die ” (1).

We have already seen how two Jesuits, Fathers Ducoudray
and Clerc, received their palm at the time when Archbishop
Darboy was similarly rewarded ; now we shall speak of the
murder of three other sons of St. Ignatius, Fathers Olivaint^
Caubert, and De Bengy, who, together with eight secular
priests and forty-one laymen, were immolated by the Com-
mune on the day following that on which the Dominicans of
Arcueil suffered (2). “ Shall I term him a martyr ? An en-

tire panegyric is found in that appellation.” Such was the
climax, borrowed from St. Ambrose of Milan, of an histor-
ical article on the Jesuit, Andrew Bobola, written by Father
Olivaint in 1854 ; and only a few years were to pass, ere the
panegyrist furnished to Catholic^ a reason for the same
question in regard to himself. On April 4th, Father Oli-

(1) Vbi supra , p. 383.

(2) For details of this act of the tragedy, see the Acts of the Captivity and Death of
Fathers P. Olivaint , L. Ducoudray , J. Caubert , A. Clerc , and A. Dc Bengy , of the
Society of Jesus. By Armand de Pnnlevoy. of the Same Society. Paris, 1804. Sixth
Edition.— Peter Olivaint , of the Society of Jesus , His Life , Works, and Martyrdom.
By Mme. M. M. Chatillon. Paris, 1876.— Peter Olivaint , Priest of the Society of
Jesus By Charles Clair , of the Same Society. Paris, 1878.

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THE CLERICAL VICTIMS OF THE COMMUNE OF 1871. 103

vaint, superior of the Jesuit house in the Rue de Sevres, was
semiofficially warned by a member of the Commune to whom
he had done some pecuniary favors, that his institution
would soon be visited by officers of the insurgent government,
who would search the establishment for hidden arms and
ammunition. He immediately ordered the removal of the two
Sacred Particles still remaining in the tabernacle, all the
other Hosts having been consumed that morning in antici-
pation of the Communist inroad ; and the two Particles thus
reserved were placed, with accompanying lights, one each
in the cells of Fathers Olivaint and Lefebvre, to satisfy the
devotion of the community, and perhaps to serve as Viati-
cum for some of the members. As the community was about
to partake of the evening Lenten “ collation,” there appeared
at the portal a commission from the Commune, with
orders for a search of the house. Rushing to their cells,
Fathers Olivaint and Lefebvre immediately concealed their
Viaticum on their bosoms, and then faced the investigators.
Of course the search was futile ; but the Communist delegate
shouted : “We are cheated; but we understand these Jesuit-
ical tricks. Therefore, you, M. the superior, and you, M.
the procurator, are arrested by order of the Commune. I
give you only time enough to take from your rooms what is
necessary.” Father Lefebvre wished to accompany his breth-
ren, Olivaint and Caubert, to the Conciergerie ; but the
delegate ordered him to remain in guard of the house “ in
the name of the Commune.” While confined in the Conci-
ergerie, Olivaint and Caubert were allowed no communica-
tion with each other ; but they had the great consolation of
receiving the Holy Communion on April 13th, owing to an
enterprise like that which we have already described as
being accomplished afterward at Mazas. On April 14,
Olivaint and Caubert were transferred to Mazas, where they
were subjected to the strict cellular system, with the sole al-
leviation of being allowed, after May 5th, to read the Journals
which were authorized by the Commune. On May 22, our two
Jesuits were sent to La Roquette, and two days afterward
they congratulated Mgr. Darboy as he walked forth to mar-
tyrdom. On May 26th, together with Father de Bengy, a

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Jesuit whom they had found in La Roquette on their arrival,
eight secular priests (1), and forty-one laymen, they were
led to the street. Surrounded by gens <f armes , the proces-
sion was ordered to march to Belleville, and it obeyed with
alacrity until it arrived at the Eue de Puebla. Here there
were assembled hundreds of armed ruffians, female as well
as male, most of the latter either fresh from the galleys or
deserters from the National army, and all drunk unto mad-
ness. With cries of “ Give us those calotins ! ” (2), this
horde joined the guards of the Commune, and to the accom-
paniment of blasphemies which have seldom been heard
outside of hell, the victims arrived at the Mairie of the
twentieth arrondissement. Here a halt was ordered for
twenty minutes, “so that the clericals might make their
wills,” as Gabriel Banvier, one of the leaders of the mob,
told his followers, to their inexpressible glee. The twenty
minutes having elapsed, the Communist guards and the fur-
ious mob arranged a kind of triumphal march, and pushed
the calotins along the Rue de Paris ; a female creature, dressed
as a vivandiere, now headed the procession with drawn
sword, trumpets sounded the charge, and young men played
with their rifles after the fashion of a theatrical drum-major.
Nearly all the laymen among the doomed were soldiers of
the National army ; and to a man, they conducted themselves
in a dignified manner, being cool and collected as though they
were under the eyes of their own officers, and all listening
eagerly to the encouragement which their priestly com-
panions tendered to them unto the last. At the intersection
of the Rue de Paris with the Rue Haxo, the energumens
began to slap the faces of their victims, and even to spit on
them, and to crush their features with stones. Suddenly a
butcher, Yictor Benot, colonel of the guards of Bergeret, the
chief incendiary of the Tuileries, shouted : “ Kill ! ” ; and the
massacre began. The first man to fall was an old priest who
flung himself in front of a soldier, in order to intercept a

(1) Radlgue, Tuffler, Rouchouse, and Tardieu, of the Congregation of Picpus ; Plan-
chat, chaplain of the (Euvre du Patronage ; Sabatier, Vicar of Notre-Dame de Lorrette ;
the AbW* Seigneret of Saint-Sulpice, and the Abbd Benoiat.

(2) Alluding to the skullcap ( calotte ) which is sometimes worn by tonsured persona,
when they preserve the tonsure, and fear to catch cold.

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THE CLERICAL VICTIMS OF THE COMMUNE OF 1871. 105

bayonet-thrust that was aimed at the youth. Most of the
military victims obeyed, when they received the order to
jump over a low wall, so that the Communists might have
the excitement of shooting them in the act ; but the priests
calmly refused, as one of them protested, “ to play the
mountebank while dying, although they were ready to die for
their faith.” The massacre lasted a full hour. On the fol-
lowing day, the Commune was definitively vanquished.

Had the Catholics of France been in the least remiss in
an exhibition of patriotism during the German invasion, the
senseless rage of the Commune against the clergy would
have been less inexplicable ; but nothing was more certain,
as Jules Simon was constrained to admit, “ than the
devotedness and self-abnegation manifested by the clergy
during the recent trials of France.” Gueroult, the editor of
the anti-clerical journal, L Opinion Rationale, did not hesi-
tate to avow : “ Whatever may be our philosophical and

religious opinions, it is but just to admit that in the present
crisis the Catholic clergy have shown themselves national
and patriotic. Those cures of Brittany who accompanied
and encouraged their parishioners on the field of battle ;
those chaplains who succored the wounded under the fire of
the enemy ; were good Frenchmen, worthy citizens. Certain-
ly this is not the time for us to outrage their dearest senti-
ments.” Even the Voltairian Constitutionnel drew this
parallel between the faithful and the disciples of the Sago
of Femey : “ In the front ranks of the army, at the advanced
posts, in the very face of the cannons, whose bravery was-
the most marked ? Who marched to the assault of Ville-
juif, at Chatillon, at Bourg, at Montretout ? Who consoled
France for the disasters of the Army of the Loire ? It was
the brave men of Brittany, the Vendeans, the Poitevins, the
peasants of Perigord and the Gironde, the Pontifical Zou-
aves— sons of our old French families, men nourished in
the respect for God and for Christianity. Priests and Sis-
ters of Charity were mentioned in the orders of the day ;
and the troops were told to look upon Chare tte, Cathelineau,
Dampierre, Saillard, etc., as examples of courage. Let
Materialism show its heroes ! ” And even Kenan thus

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eulogized his Catholic adversaries : “ The Legitimist and
Clerical party has given us a good example. It could have
felt little sympathy for the government which was born of
the revolution of the Fourth of September ; but nevertheless,
it rushed bravely to arms, and it served that government
because of its essential object, national defense. All the
factions of the republican party have not shown the same
spirit of abnegation.” The authority of Bismarck in the
premises may be questionable ; but since he was then pre-
paring his “War for Civilization,” the pretext for which
he exhibited in the alleged impossibility of true patriotism
in a Catholic breast, we may adduce this observation :
“ The republican party is the least patriotic of all the par-
ties in France. Influenced by the International, the idiots
proclaim the world as their country. During the siege of
Paris, the ferocious republicans of Belleville, of Montmar-
tre, and of Menilmontant, were a real type of cowardice.
In the whole war, not one notable republican was hit by
our bullets. If men like Flourens and Delescluze were
killed, it was while fighting against their fellow-countrymen.
On the contrary, men like De Luynes, Chevreuse, Dampierre,
the Pontifical Zouaves, the mobiles of Brittany, resisted
us heroically ” (1). In fact, as M. Saint-Genest remarked :
“ Under the sway of Gambetta, all parties fought except the
friends of Gambetta ; every party fought to the bitter end,
except that party which had invented the phrase * guerre d
outrance ! ’ ” (2). Since we have touched on this contrast
between the patriotic acts of the Catholic party in France
And the inane mouthings of the so-called republicans, it may
be well to note that these latter gentry prevented the success
of each sortie which the besieged army of Paris made
against the Germans ; for less than a half of that army was
at the disposal of General Trochu, it being necessary to
retain more than half of it to hold the traitors in check (3).
Nor can we forget than when Thiers, on Oct. 31, thought
that he was about to save the integrity of French territory,

(1) Letter to a Baron , Nov. 16th, 1871. (2) In the Figaro. Paris, July M, 1875.

(3) Constitutionnel^-J ournal des Debate, Nov. 18th, 1870— Courrier de Lyon, Dec.
i5th, 1870, and March 16th, 1871.

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THE CLERICAL VICTIMS OF THE COMMUNE OF 1871. 107

Uismarck, having in mind the demagogic rumblings in
Paris, sarcastically asked him : “ In the name of what
government do you speak — in the name of that of to-day , or
of the one of to-morrow ? ” Finally, General Trochu de-
clared to all France : “ It is a matter of public notoriety

that the Germans had accepted the conditions of the Govern-
ment for the National Defense in reference to the armistice
proposed by the neutral powers, when the fatal and abject
events of Oct. 31 restored hope to the Prussian policy,
and thus compromised a situation which was honorable and
worthy” (1).

Now for a brief account of the connection of Freemasonry
with the Commune. In the Inquiry into the Acts of the
Government Established for the National Defense (Gambetta’s),
which was undertaken by a parliamentary commission, and
the results of which were published to the world, we read
(Yol. iv., p. 538) the following testimony of M. Bourgoin :
“ It appears to me that three elements impeded the national
defense from the very beginning, and finally prepared the
events of March 18 (the explosion of the Commune). These
three elements were the Masonic Lodges of Paris ; the So-
cialists known as Positivists ; and the International The

Freemasons introduced themselves into all the commissions,
even among the delegates of the butchers ; they perorated in
the Lodges, they paraded at funerals, they sat in the muni-
cipal and governmental commissions. Every thought of
national defense was laid aside.” But in spite of the Ma-
sonic activity, the elections of February 8, 1871, resulted in
the assemblage in Bordeaux of a large majority of Christian
and royalist deputies — a fact which indicated the probability
of a restoration of the legitimate monarchy in the person
of Henry V., the single-minded prince whose royalty was ob-
scured under the title of Comte de Chambord. This probabil-
ity was a menace to all the conquests of the Revolution ;
and all of its coryphees, no matter of what faction, from the
Jacobin masters of Paris to Thiers and Bismarck, conspired
to avert it. The explosion of March 18, says Deschamps,
“was undoubtedly the work of the Jacobins and Socialists ;

(1) • Proclamation of General Trochu% Nov. 14th, 1870.

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but it received the immediate support of all the Masons of
Paris and of the provinces, who designed to profit by this
movement in order to deprive the National Assembly of ita
power, or at least to obtain, as a kind of compromise, a de-
finitive proclamation of the Republic ” (2). On April 26,
when the Commune was in full blast, a large assembly of
Masons was held at the Chatelet ; and having chosen the
famous Floquet as “ orator,” they voted this resolution :
“ Having exhausted every means of concilation with the gov-
ernment of Versailles, the Masonic Order has determined to
plant its banner on the ramparts of Paris ; and if one ball
touches that banner, the Masonic brethren will march with
one accord against the common enemy.” Then the assembly
proceeded to the street, where it was joined by ten thousand
other Masons, all wearing the regalia of the order; and
marching to the Hotel de Ville, they there saluted, by the
mouth of their “ orator,” Thirifocque, the government of the
insurrection in these words : “ The Commune is the grand-
est revolution that the world has ever witnessed ; it is the
New Temple of Solomon, the defence of which is the duty
of Freemasonry.” Then the citizen Lefrangais, a member
of the Commune, harangued the brethren, stating that for
many years his heart had been thoroughly Masonic, since
he was a member of the Scotch Lodge No. 133, one of the
most republican Lodges in the order ; for a long time he
had known that the object of the order was identical with
that of the Commune.” Then a delegation of the members
of the Commune solemnly accompanied the triumphant
adepts to the “ temple ” in the Rue Cadet. On May 6, after
Thiers had received the Masonic delegates, and had refused
to recognize the government of the Commune, the “ Con-
federation of the Freemasons of Paris ” addressed the follow-
ing manifesto to the brethren: “Brothers in Masonry!
Now we can resolve on nothing else than to fight, and to
cover the cause of right with our sacred aegis. Arm your-
selves for defence! Save Paris, France, and humanity!
Paris, ever at the head of human progress, in this its supremo

(1) The Secret Societies and Society ; or , the Philosophy of Contemporary History +
Vul. li„ p. 421. Avlffnon, 1882.

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THE CLERICAL VICTIMS OF THE COMMUNE OF 1871. 109

crisis calls on all tlie Masons throughout the world in these
words : ‘ Aid me, ye sons, of the widow ! ’ This appeal will
be heeded by every Freemason ; all will unite in common
.action, protesting against the civil war which has been in-
stigated by the supporters of monarchy. . . . Masons ! You
have deserved well of the Universal Country ; you have as-
sured the happiness of the peoples in all future time. Live
the Republic! Live the Communes of France federated
with that of Paris ! ” It is true that a few members of the
Grand Orient emitted an equivocal and faint-hearted protest
against the overt acts pf the Lodges of Paris, alleging the
brazen and ridiculous lie that Masonry never interfered in
politics ; but the perfunctory utterance was evidently made
by way of precaution against the consequences of failure,
and its effect on the brethren is well evinced by a note in the
Official Journal of the Commune , published during the first
days of May, stating that “ The Freemasons intend to see
that the decrees of the Commune are strictly obeyed ; a bu-
reau has been established in each mairie” In fact, just as
in the days of the Terror, all the Lodges of Paris were trans-
formed into so many Jacobin Clubs and Committees of Pub-
lic Safety. And when the National army had entered Paris,
and the Commune had resolved to leave to France only the
ruins of her capital, there appeared the following exhorta-
tion, addressed on May 22, in the name of the Grand Orient,
to all the adepts : “ Freemasons of all the rites and of every

grade! The Commune, the defender of your sacred prin-
ciples, called you to her aid ; you obeyed the summons, and
your venerated standards have been torn by the bullets and
shells of their enemies ; you replied heroically. Continue
with the aid of all our brethren and of all of our apprentices ;
the instructions, which you have received in our venerated
Lodges, dictate to each one of you the sacred duties which
he must fulfil. Happy are they who die gloriously in this
holy struggle.” Finally, for many years after the fall of the
Commune, the Masonic powers in other countries openly
manifested their sympathies with the defeated Communists
of France. Thus, we read in that superexcellent Masonic au-
thority, the Chaine $ Union (May, 1872) that on the preced-

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

ing April 17, the Grand Lodge of London gave a banquet inr
honor of the fallen Commune, at which attended the famous
Bradlaugh among other notable English brethren, and
La Cecilia among several distinguished Italian adepts (1).
When many of the captured Communists, condemned to de-
portation by the national government, arrived in New Cale-
donia, they found consolation in the Masonic Lodge L’ Union
Caledonienne , which had been founded in the time of the
empire by the governor, Guillain. It was through means of
this Lodge, tolerated, asserts Deschampg, by secret instruc-
tion from Thiers, that Rochefort made his escape. The in-
quiry into the evasion, made by Admiral Ribourt, proved
that the necessary funds had been furnished by the Lodges
to one of the brethren who was an employee in the admin-
istration of the colony. Concluding these reflections, we
would observe that uncertainty still reigns concerning the
extent of the sympathies and relations of Bismarck with the
Commune ; but it is certain that the leaders of the Commune
made many offers of service to the enemy of France*
if he would engage to support their desperate cause. The
following remark of Cluseret to Hatzfeld, an agent of the
German chancellor, found in the relation which the Com-
munist general himself published, is certainly suggestive :

“ Let us put aside the affair of the archbishop , and speak
only of the interests which your government has in common
with the Commune of Paris. If the government of Ver-
sailles triumphs, there will be a desperate effort to re-estab-
lish the monarchy ; and no monarchy could even attempt to
maintain itself in France, without promising revenge on
you ” (2).

(1) Under date of June 11, 1871, the London Correspondent of the Moniteur Univcrsel
spoke of the sympathy entertained for the defeated Communists by a very large portion of
tbe English people; and be added: “ One would have a very incorrect Idea of the:
propaganda of the International, were he to suppose that It succeeds only in tbe lower
strata of English society. In many literary circles tbe doctrines of tbe Commune find
defenders, and especially among the adepts of Positivism.”

(2) Cited by tbe Gazette < le France , May 90, 1878,

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THE FRENCH REPUBLIC A PERSECUTOR OF THE CHURCH. Ill

CHAPTER IV.

THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC AS A PERSECUTOR OF THE CHURCH.

“ The republican form of government is that which divides
us the least,” said Thiers in the first days of 1871. A bit-
ter enemy of the legitimate royalty, and therefore unwilling
to play the game of aMonck ; an inveterate skeptic, and there-
fore unable to pose as a Washington ; entertaining a velleity in
favor of the younger and traitorous branch of the Bourbons —
the so-called House of Orleans — because its cause was that
of an alliance between the Revolution and a veneer of re-
spectability ; the ex-Orleanist Minister should rather have
avowed that he advocated the republican system, because it
alone then furnished him an opportunity of becoming the
head of the State. During the entire political career of this
chamelion-like statesman, if the grandeur and prosperity of
France ever engaged his attention, it was after a merely sec-
ondary fashion ; power for himself, to be attained by any
and every means — no matter how iniquitous and disgrace-
ful, was the sole end of his policy. With reason did Lamar-
tine thus apostrophize him : “ In you there is no principle ;
but there is a passion— the passion to govern, to govern
alone, to govern always, to govern with and against all, to
govern at any price.” It was this unscrupulous lust of pow-
er (it was too ignoble to merit the name of ambition) that led
Thiers to associate himself with men whom he had hitherto
termed “ furious madmen ” — men whose alliance, as lie said,
could be nothing else than “ a cheating game on both sides ;
a game in which each player was a liar in the mind of his
neighbor ; a compromise which rendered all engaged in it un-
worthy of public respect.” No wonder, therefore, that when,
on May 24, 1873, Thiers tendered his resignation of the
presidency to the National Assembly, hoping that it would
not be accepted, this truly able man, after forty years of gov-
ernmental experience which could not endow him with thei

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faculty of organization, was relegated to private life (1).
When the reins of power were assumed by Marshal Mac-
Mahon, eleven hours after the resignation of Thiers, the lov-
ers of law and order conceived great hopes for France ; and
the ever-sanguine partisans of Legitimacy fancied that Henry
V. would soon mount the throne of his ancestors. The
trust of the Legitimists seemed well-founded indeed, when,
on Aug. 5, the Comte de Paris, head of the hitherto rebel-
lious Orleans branch of the Bourbons, repaired to Frohsdorff,
the residence of the Comte de Chambord, and formally ac-
knowledged that prince as King of France and Navarre, thus
tendering an amende for the treachery of Philippe Egalite,
and for the usurpation of Louis Philippe. It is generally sup-
posed that the failure of these royalist anticipations was due
to the too straightforward letter, in which the Comte de
Chambord declared that he would never ascend the throne
as “ King of the Revolution that he would decline a scep-
tre which would be a symbol of principles which he detest-
ed. It is certain that this letter caused a division in the
royalist ranks ; that the so-called “ Liberal ” Catholics could
not bring themselves to place principle above fancied utility.
But it is more than probable that the failure of the royalist
restoration was chiefly due to the machinations of Bismarck
and of the Masonic Order (2). The administration of Pres-

(1) Tbiers died suddenly, wblle seated at dinner with his wife, on Sept. 3, 1877. Whether
lie had ever made his First Communion, is doubtful. Certainly during the greater part of
tils life he was an avowed Deist, somewhat after the fashion of Voltaire. However, in
his later years he frequently insisted on his Catholicism ; and at the beginning of bis last
will and testament these words were written : “ I am a Catholic, and wish to die a Catho-
lic.” Therefore, when Mme. Thiers requested that a Christian funeral should be accorded
to her husband, no objection was made by the authorities of the Church. Ville-
francuk; Adolphe Thiers , in the TUnstrUms Persons of the Nineteenth Century.
Paris, 1883.

(2) The publication of the Arntm documents showed that Bismarck regarded it as the In-
terest of Germany to prevent a coronation of Henry V. as king of France ; that the astute and
phenomenally unprincipled chancellor felt that with the restoration of her legitimate mon-
archy France would recover her ancient glory. In the despatches revealed by the Arnim
affair, we read that “ Germany need fear nothing from either the Republic or the Empire” ;
that “ it is to the Interest of Germany that France remain weak and without allies ” ; that
” the Republic, and If not the Republic, the Empire, will furnish the least probability of a
resurrection for France ” ; that “ a monarchical France w'ould be a danger for Germany.”
Dr. Busch tells us that Bismarck exclaimed to him one day at table: ” No Bourbons or
Orleans in France ! ” The action of Freemasonry in this matter of Henry V., is scarcely
regarded by the Masonic powers as a secret. The Masonic Journal La Revolution Fran -
^aLse, May 12, 1879, says that when there was a probability of the acclamation of Henry V.,
“ Gambetta prepared and organized throughout all France, and even in the army, an In-

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THE FRENCH REPUBLIC A PERSECUTOR OF THE CHURCH. 113

ident MacMahon, although supported by a Conservative ma-
jority in the Senate, was in continual warfare with the Radical
majority in the Chamber of Deputies which followed the
lead of Gambetta. And this Radical majority of the lower
house was persistently encouraged by all the “ offic-
ious” journals of Germany, and by the entire Masonic
press of the world. In 1877, when monarchical hopes
were again reviving, the subsidized Bismarckian jour-
nals continually insisted that France, not yet recovered
from her wounds of 1870-71, would feel the effects of
another German invasion, if the imminent election should
be favorable to the marshal’s policy ; and all these articles
were carefully detailed to the voters by the sectarian agents.
Ten days after the triumph of the Radicals at the polls, that
is, on Oct. 24, 1877, the Supreme Council of the Scotch Rite
of Masons gave a grand banquet to all the brethren who had
been sent by their respective Lodges, in every land, to con-
gratulate the adepts of France. Brother Jules Simon offered
a toast “ to the triumphant Republic advancing in the future

surrection, In comparison with which that of March 18 would have been mere child's
play." It was proved, before the tribunals of Autun and Dijon, that during tho monarchi-
cal agitation of 1873 the Masons of Saone-et- Loire planned to kidnap the Marchioness de
MacMahon. a relative of the marshal-president, and to hold her as a hostage for the per-
manence of his republicanism. The chief of this conspiracy was Boysset. Venerable of the
Lodge in Chalons, and a deputy In the National Assembly. This latter fact prevented bis
trial. In the Echo de Saone-et- Loire, Oct. 15, 1874, we read that two of the conspirators
the brothers Bonteraps, who were leaders in the International, were willing to promote the
advent of a spurious monarchy, rather than the legitimate one of the elder Bourbons ; and
that accordingly they tendered their services and that of their fellow-sectarians to the
Orleans princes. The Masonic Chaine d' Union, Jan., 1874, cites the Monthly Bulletin of
Italian Masonry , issued by the Italian Grand Orients, as having recently said, when
treating of a probable restoration : ** We can perceive that it is of the utmost importance
that all the Masonic societies be subjected to a uniform impulse and discipline, so that they
may act more efficaciously in the interests of right and of liberty." The same Masonic
Chaine d' Union, to which we are deeply grateful for so much of our information concern-
ing its supporters, gives us in its issue of July, 1882, a discourse pronounced in the Lodge
Free Thought of Aurillac on March 4, from which we cull these morsels : " You know
lhat it is to the grand Revolution of 1789 that we owe the political reforms which have
changed the face of not only Europe, but of the entire universe (sic). But who prepared,
who directed ; in a word, who made that Revolution ? You. gentlemen, you— Freemasonry,
the daughter of the Reformation. . . . And after the Revolution and the Empire, Free-
masonry continued the work of the liberation of the peoples. Persecuted by the Restor-
ation, it was not unconcerned with the Revolution of 1830. Then it fought Louis Philippe,
who was to be, as Lafayette said, the best of republicans, but who was merely the king of
the upper bourgeoisie. . . . Finally, ou May 16 (1877), I see you again at work. When
treason had raised to power the enemies of the Republic, you rushed into the breach, and
you fought the foe foot by foot, forcing him finally. to a capitulation in which you buried
■all hopes of a monarchical restoration."

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without impediment.” Brother Van Humbeck, Grand-Mas-
ter of the Belgian Masonry, and Minister of Public Instruc-
tion in his then sorely- tried country, “ congratulated France
on the point at which she had arrived ” (1). And what was
this point? In October, 1872, a year before there was any
talk of a monarchical restoration, there had been held in
Locarno a “ convent ” of the representatives of Continental
Masonry. The Orient of Rome was represented by Filippo
Cordova ; that of Naples by Franchi ; that of Palermo by
La Vaccara ; that of Florence by Andrea Giovanelli ; that of
Turin by Alberto Mario ; and that of Genoa by Quadrio.
The Lodges of France were represented by Felix Pyat ; those
of Hungary by Kossuth ; those of Switzerland by Klap-
ka ; and those of Prussia by General Etzel. The questions
for consideration were proposed by the Prussian, who presid-
ed at the sessions : 1. Would democracy be benefited by a
war between the France of Thiers and Italy ? 2. How could
a provisional government, under the dictatorship of Gam-
betta, be established in France ? 3. What new religion ought
to be substituted for Catholicism ? (2). It is evident, there-
fore, that five ye&rs before the electoral condemnation of the
policy of MacMahon, Freemasonry had decreed the eventual
supremacy of its protegee and tool, Gambetta ; and certainly
the phrase “ provisional government under the dictatorship
of Gambetta ” 6tted well the course of that disciplined parlia-
mentary majority which neutralized such good intentions as
President MacMahon may have entertained. After a multi-
tude of concessions to the Masonico-Radical spirit of the
deputies, MacMahon finally refused to accept a measure
which would have disorganized the army; and when his
determination was met with the cry “ submit or resign,” he
chose the latter course on Jan. 30, 1879. With the advent
of Grevy as President, the French Republic entered on a
new phase of existence ; the comparatively conservative cab-
inet of MacMahon was dismissed, and in the new one the
Ministry of Public Instruction was assigned to Jules Ferry.
On March 15, Ferry laid before the deputies two bills which

(1) Chaim d' Union, Nov., 1878.

(2) L'VniviiHi Nov. 12, 1872.— Pachtler ; War Against Throne and Altar , p. 158.

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were aimed at an entire destruction of that Freedom of Edu-
cation, for which the Catholics of France had so persistently
fought, as will be remembered by the reader who has ac-
companied us in our studies on Lacordaire, Ozanam, and
Montalembert One of these bills modified the composition
and the duties of the Superior Council for Public Instruc-
tion, and of the Academic Councils, inasmuch as it conferred
on the State all authority in the matter of teaching. The
other bill, which directly concerned freedom in the matter
of imparting secondary and superior instruction, accorded
to the State an exclusive right to examine candidates for aca-
demic degrees ; it deprived all private institutions of the
title and privileges of a University ; and by one of its articles,
the celebrated Article VII., it pretended to take the right of
teaching from every religious congregation which was not
“ authorized ” by the government.

The Ferry Laws, as history will term these tyrannous
measures which signalized the accession of Gr6vy to the
French presidency, were merely the result of the work un-
dertaken by the Ligue de V Emeignement or Educational
Association which had been founded in 1866 by Jules Mace*
with the active support of Robert, director-general under
Duruy, then the imperial Minister of Public Instruction.
The object of this league was to render all instruction gra-
tuitous, obligatory, and above all, secular; the modicum of
freedom of instruction then subsisting, a privilege which the
laws of 1833 and 1850 had allowed the Catholic institutions to
exercise in their brave endeavors to compete with a govern-
mental University which enjoyed a revenue of fifty-eight,
millions of francs, was to be entirely abrogated. This as-
sociation numbered among its active members not only near-
ly all the professors of the University, but also a majority of
the imperial prefects, procurators, and other functionaries.
Mace proclaimed that his league “ would reduce to practice >
the principles proclaimed in the Lodges ” ; and it is inter-
esting to note that three years afterward, in the Masonic
Congress of Metz, it was this same Mace who moved that the
name of God should be expunged from the statutes of Ma-
sonry— a project which was finally actuated by the Grand,

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Convent held in Paris on September 14, 1877, after consulta-
tion with all the Lodges in the obedience of the French
Grand Orient (1). Shortly after the birth of the league, the
Monde Mafonnique (April, 1867) said : “We are happy to be
able to announce that the league founded by Brother Jean
Mace, and also the project of a statue to Brother Voltaire,
have excited the sympathies of all our Lodges. Certainly
no two subscriptions could be more in agreement than that
in favor of Voltaire, which means the destruction of preju-
dice and superstition, and that for the league, which means a
new society founded only on science and instruction. All
the brethren understand this.” And in his circular of July
4, 1870, the Grand -Master Babaud-Laribiere said : “We are
all of one mind in regard to the principle of gratuitous,
obligatory, and lay instruction.” On September 24, 1878, at
the banquet given by the Grand Orient on the occasion of the
Universal Exposition, the Adjunct-Grand-Master of the Bel-
gian Grand Orient, Bourland, thus perorated amid universal
applause : “ The obstacle to the intellectual development of
France, that which is killing her, that which is killing us,
that which is killing the entire world, is ignorance and
fanaticism — the idea that the world should belong to him
who is most daring in weakening the intellectual faculties, in
brutalizing man. Let us arise against this pretension I
Home, together with Ultramontanism, ignorance, and all else
that comes from Borne, must perish, because of a develop-
ment of an education ivhich will lead to morality ” (2). In
•order to obtain funds for their campaign against all religious
teaching in schools, the Masons organized the (Euvre du Sou
des ficoles or School-Penny Collection throughout the repub-
lic ; and in order to inspire the people with an enthusiasm
which would result in contributions, every kind of festivity
was brought into requisition. Thus at the grand festival
given by the Lodges of Bordeaux in the public gardens on
June 24, 1879, as we learn from the Monde Mafonnique,
•“ Just as the last banners of the processions (of Corpus

(1) The statutes of the Grand Orient of France had hitherto given as the basis of Masonry
"“the existence of God, the study of morality, and the practice of all virtues.” The new
statute assigned : “ Absolute freedom of conscience and human solidarity.”

(2) Monde Ma^onnvjt^^ November, 1878, p. 340.

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THE FRENCH REPUBLIC A PERSECUTOR OF THE CHURCH. 117

Christi) were re-entering their respective sacristies,” the cere-
monies of irreligion were begun ; and in the evening the
adepts exhibited a piece of fire-works “which presented
‘ The Works of Masonry ’ as its title, and reminded the
17,000 spectators of the object being pursued by the Order.”
Quite properly, therefore, had Mac6 said in a general meet-
ing of his league on January 18, 1879 : “The destiny of our
association is so intimately united with that of the republic,
that the sole imminence of that senatorial majority, which
was to consecrate republican institutions definitively, suffices
to precipitate the movement which is directed principally by
us.” The movement was precipitated on March 7 by the
proposition of the laws prepared by Jules Ferry, a
Masonic luminary whose brutal materialism had been mani-
fested two years previously when the Lodge Clemente
Amitie of Paris gave a banquet in honor of the anniversary
of the reception of Littre and Wyrouboff into its bosom :
“ The Masonic fraternity is something superior to all dogmas,
to all metaphysical conceptions, and not only to all religions,
but to all philosophies. I mean that sociability is sufficient
unto itself ; that social morality has its guarantees and its
roots in the human conscience ; that it can live by itself ;
that at length it can throw away its theological crutches,
and march untramelled to the conquest of the world. You
are the most precious instruments for the cultivation of the
social sentiment, for the development of social and lay mor-
ality. ... It is of the essence of Masonry to free man from the
fear of death. To this so-ancient fear, to this slavery which
it is so hard to crush, you oppose the strengthening and con-
soling sentiment of the continuity and perfectibility of the
human species. . . . When one is animated by this conviction,
one has conquered for himself every liberty ” (1). Scarcely
had Ferry presented his bills in the Chamber, when Masonic

(1) Chains <T Union, 1877, p. 181.— These remarks of Ferry remind us of the Italian*
sectarian utterances of Brother Mauro Maochi, deputy in the Italian Parliament and a
member of the 8upreme Couucil of the Italian adepts, when he wrote to the Masonic-
Review in February, 1874 : " The key-stone of the system which opposes Masonry has al-
ways been and is the ascetic and transcendental sentiment which turns the attention of
men beyond this ilfe, and induces them to consider themselves as mere travellers on earth,
urging them to sacrifice everything fora happiness that will begin in the graveyard.
Until this system is destroyed by the mallet of Masonry, society will be mainly composed of
poor weaklings who think of nothing but happiness in a future life.”

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Conferences were convened throughout the republic for the
purpose of creating or augmenting a popular yearning for
the blessings of irreligious education. At the Conference
held in Marseilles on April 5, Brother Gambini, Venerable
of the Lodge La Parfaiie Sincerity drew the attention of his
frenzied brethren to : “ Brother Jules Ferry, Minister of Pub-
lic Instruction, endeavoring to render education essentially
laic , although he is surrounded by nameless intrigues and
assaults on the part of the clerical hordes. . . . But if Brother
Jules Ferry is accomplishing a work which *is essentially
Masonic, it is the duty of us Masons to aid him in the ful-
filment of his mission. Let him know that he is sustained
by an army in reserve which, although it is calm because it
is conscious of its power, is ready nevertheless to defend his
work with its life ” (1). During the summer of 1879, Ferry
made a tour through the south of France, in order to enable
the Brethren of the Three Points to incite popular demon-
strations which might neutralize the opposition of all that
was sensible and religious to his projects. Having read the
many addresses which were ostentatiously presented to him
by the Lodges, we quote as representative of them all, some
passages from that of the Lodges of Toulouse : The Masons

of Toulouse extend to you a welcome, and tender the senti-
ments of respect which they feel for a Minister who sustains,
with persistent courage, so difficult a combat against the
eternal enemies of civil society. Democratic France, laboring
France is with you ;and Freemasonry cannot forget that the
Minister of Public Instruction is one of her most distin-
guished sons. Freemasonry will assist you, dear brother,
with all the means in her power ; for she well understands
that ... it is necessary that French youth be delivered from

the schemes of the Jesuits Inform the government,

dear brother, that especially in this matter, the Masonry
of Toulouse is on its side.”

The introduction of the second of the Ferry Laws, that
which practically suppressed the free Faculties and Univer-
sities created in virtue of the law of 1875, excited sentiments
of horror and indignation among the Catholics of France.

(1) Chaine cT Union, May, 1879.

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THE FRENCH REPUBLIC A PERSECUTOR OF THE CHURCH. 119

When it was discussed, during June and part of July, elo-
quent voices pleaded for freedom of teaching and of the
religious orders ; but hatred of religion led the deputies to
pass Article VII. by a vote of 330 out of 515, and to pass the
law as an entirety by a vote of 362 out of 521. In the Senate,
however, the propriety and justice of Article VTI. were fiercely
contested ; and the Catholic cause was reinforced by the very
un clerical Jules Simon and Laboulaye. The senatorial vote
could not be taken before March 9, 1880; and then the
iniquitous article was defeated by a majority of 19, the rest
of the law being accepted. The deputies adopted the
amendment of the Senate. The law concerning the Superior
Council and the Academic Councils had been slightly modi-
fied, and then passed in February. The rejection of Article
VII., as the reader may easily have foreseen, had not been
regarded by the Masons and other radicals with equanimity.
Determined to withdraw the youth of France from “ the
clutches of the Jesuits and other teaching orders,’* they re-
suscitated the memory of several laws which had fallen into
desuetude — laws which were even contrary to the so much
vaunted principles of 1789, and which had been abolished
by non-use and by a law of 1850. On March 29, 1880, there
appeared decrees of the president, based on laws of 1790 and
1792, on the Napoleonic Concordat, and on the Organic
Articles which Napoleon had added to that Concordat.
These decrees accorded to that “ non-authorized ” association
which “ was styled ‘ of Jesus ’ ” a delay of three months,
within which term it was to withdraw from all establishments
that it occupied on French territory. A similar delay of
three months was granted to all other “ un-authorized ”
organizations, during which said bodies “ might apply to
the government for an approbation of their statutes and
rules, and for a legal recognition of their establishments
which then existed de facto.” The execution of these decrees
began on June 30, the officers having received instructions
to finish their work before November. However, several of
the affected colleges continued to exist, despite these en-
actments, owing to the zeal of wealthy Catholics who bought
the confiscated properties, and installed therein professors

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who were not congreganistes or members of any order, but
who were devoted to the sacred cause of religious education.
By the procedure of March 29, 1880, the French Republic
declared open war on the Catholic Church ; and why should
it not have so done, when the Lodges pronounced the
incompatibility of Catholicism and Republicanism ? On
May 9, Courdavaux, professor in the Faculty of Letters at
Douay, gave a Conference on the Sacred Scriptures (!) before
the Lodge L'Etoile du Nord of Lille, in which he said : “ The
distinction between Catholicism and Clericalism is purely
official, a subtlety necessary for the exigencies of the platform ;
but here in the Lodge, we may proclaim the truth that
Catholicism and Clericalism are one and the same thing.
And let us add this conclusion. No man can be both Catholic
and Republican ; it is impossible” (1). It is refreshing to
note the attempted justification of the cabinet to which he
belonged, made by Cazot, then Minister of Justice. In an
address to the Lodge L’ficlio du Grand-Orient of Nimes,
Cazot said : “ According to a phrase that is familiar to you,
we have entered on an era of difficulties. It is not yet closed.
We have many combats before us ; for instance, the magis-
tracy is to be reformed, so that it may be neither servile
nor factious. The law must be respected by all, and espec-
ially by those who, under the vain pretext of defending a re-
ligious liberty whose founders and apostles we are, and of
which they are the worst enemies, pretend to obey only a
foreign sovereignty, refusing to bow before the sovereignty
of their country ” (2). We must not forget, however, that
for a moment after the first enforcements of the decrees
against the “ un-authorized ” teaching orders, there seemed
to be promised an escape from the storm. The superiors of
the afflicted communities had sent to the government a
declaration couched in very moderate terms, and approved
by the French episcopate ; and Grevy, supported by Frey-
cinet, then Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the
Council, had shown a disposition to be contented with that

(1) The Chaine d' Union of June, 1880, published this Conference as worthy of the
highest praise.

(2) Chaine d' Union, 1880, p. 287.

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Declaration. The debates on this subject occupied the cabi-
net on Sept. 16, 17, and 18 ; and precisely on those days the
Grand-Orient was in solemn session. The consequence of
this coincidence was narrated by the Moniteur Universel on
Sept. 22 : “ One of the Masons of the ‘ Convent ’ (of the Grand-
Orient) was told last Saturday about the negotiations which
M. de Freycinet had held with the Vatican concerning the
Declaration of the congregations. He replied : ‘ If the presi-
dent of the Council has negotiated with the Pope, he will
leave the cabinet.’ And on the next day, as the Mason had
prophesied, M. de Freycinet was forced to resign his port-
folio.” On. Sept. 28, a new cabinet was formed, and Jules
Ferry was constituted its head. The war against everything
religious continued. The hospitals were deprived of the
services of the Sisters of Charity ; a law establishing divorce
was introduced in the Chamber ; cemeteries were secularized
military chaplaincies were abolished ; it was proposed to
subject seminarians to military service; public religious
processions were prohibited ; new laws were enacted for the
purpose of concentrating more thoroughly in the State all
instruction of youth. The enforcement of the Ferry Laws,
primarily directed against the Jesuits, but applied also to*
the other orders whose members devoted themselves to
teaching the young, was an occasion for the most revolting
abuses of the governmental authority ; in many instances,
even the honor of the army was compromised by its use in
the siege of convents and monasteries. Under the influence
of the emotions excited by these scandals, many French Cath-
olics were then disposed to find fault with Pope Leo XIII.
on account of his silence in the premises ; many blamed the
Pontiff for his sympathy with, if not his instigation of
the conciliatory Declaration emitted by the superiors of the
persecuted communities. But let us remember that from the
very beginning of the anti-Catholic campaign undertaken
by the Third Republic, the Holy See had realized that the
circumstances were such as called for a persistent exercise
of the patient prudence which is the most salient characteris-
tic of the Papal Court. Let us remember, with one of the
most judicious of the critics of the pontificate of Leo

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XIII. (1), that His Holiness had deemed it wise to abstain
from any demonstration which might have compromised the
interests of the Church in France, by throwing obstacles in the
way of the relatively conciliatory advances which Freycinet
seemed to be ready to make. “ But the Pontiff had emitted
his complaints and protests in a diplomatic manner ; and he
was about to repeat them in a more solemn style, when
there appeared the semi-official proposition in regard to the
Declaration (of the religious superiors). As for that docu-
ment, there was no reason for disapproving it ; not only did
it contain nothing contrary to principle, but it gave rise to a
hope that the persecution would terminate. When these
anticipations failed of realization, and when the Pontiff per-
ceived that reticence was no longer a duty, he issued his
•eloquent letter to Cardinal Guibert, dated Oct. 22, 1880.”
In this letter, Leo XIII. gave great praise to the conduct of
the French Catholics, both clerical and lay, and he lauded
the heroism of the hundreds of French magistrates who had
abandoned their positions, rather than execute the decrees
of the persecutors. In reference to the Declaration of the
superiors, he reminded the superfluously zealous among the
Catholics that it ought to be sufficient for them to know
that “ the Declaration had been prepared by the authority,
by the instigation, or at least by the permission of their
bishops.” Then the Pontiff recalled for the benefit of the
zealots the principles on which the permissibility of the Dec-
laration was based ; that is, the well-understood fact that
the Church is opposed to no form of government — that the
-Church seeks only the good of religion in all of her rela-
tions with the civil power. “ No one can deny,” added the
Pope, “ that in all things which are not unjust, the powers
that exist are to be obeyed, so that there may result a pre-
servation of that order which is the source of public se-
curity.” The Pontiff wras careful to observe, however, that
from what he had presented as the duty of Catholics toward
the republican government of France, “ it did not follow that
in obeying the existing powers, they should necessarily

(i) T’Serclaes ; Pope Leo XIII., His Life, His Religious, Political, and Social
Acts. Paris, 1894.

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approve whatever might be wrong in the constitution or
administration of the' government.”

On March 28, 1882, there was promulgated a law concern-
ing primary instruction which rendered that instruction
obligatory in the case of all children who were between six
and thirteen years of age ; but the instruction was not neces-
sarily to be received in the institutions of the State — a
privilege which favored, of course, only those Catholics
whose pecuniary condition enabled them to patronize the
private schools, w hich received no subsidies from the govern-
ment. During the discussion of this law in the Senate,
Jules Simon, ultra-radical though he was, was sufficiently
generous to venture to move an amendment to the effect
that the children of the State schools should be taught
“their duties to God and their country ” ; but the president
of the commission charged with the examination of the law,
one Schaelclier, cried : “ I cannot accept that amendment,
since I am an atheist.” The Catholics of the smaller towns
and villages frequently succeeded in partially obviating the
curse of the prohibition of religious instruction in their
public schools ; the Municipal Councils enjoyed the right
of naming the members of the School Commissions, and they
often named ecclesiastics as such members. The cabinet
of Freycinet was replaced during seven months by that which
was organized by Duclerc ; and Duvaux, its Minister of
Public Instruction, was apparently contend with what his
predecessors had effected to the detriment of the Church.
But on Feb. 21, 1883, President Grevy assigned to Ferry the
task of forming a new Ministry, and of course the champion
priest-eater hastened to resume his favorite occupation (1).

(1) As a Minister of Public Instruction, Ferry possessed strange notions concerning the
moral needs of the daughters of France. Whereas most of the giants of his school ever
desired that their wives and daughters should be religious women. Ferry took care, when
re-organizing the Normal School for Girls at Versailles, to uot only appoint as its president
a Protestant (the widow Jules Favre), but also to establish as Its professor of Moral Science
a notorious infidel, Joseph Fabre. In bis Elements of Philosophy this trainer of future
wives and mothers wrote : Morality can and ought to be taught independently of God

(p. 258). . . . The contrary doctrine would Justify the poisoning of Socrates ; it would ienew
the great scandal of the cross of Jesus ; it would exalt Nero and Doraittan ; it would re-
kindle the pyre of Giordano Bruno ; it would repeat the horrors of St. Bartholomew’s Day
(p. 260). . . . The pretended demonstrations of the existence of a God are insufficient ”
(p. 867).

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HI8T0RY.

Throughout France, innumerable pastors were deprived
of their “ salaries,” merely because some informers, perhaps
notorious liars, had denounced them as violators of unjust
laws. The cross was torn from the gates of the cemeteries
in Paris, and in many of the other large cities. Since the
Masonic designs were often thwarted by the “ undue ”
moderation of some magistrates in applying or interpreting
the persecuting enactments, Ferry engineered through the
Chamber a law which suspended for three months the
irremovability of the judges ; and immediately their office was
taken from all the magistrates whose integrity and indepen-
dence gave umbrage to the Lodges. More than six hundred
magistrates were thus dismissed. During 1884 the eccle-
siastical budget, never too large, since it was equal to about
the half of one per cent, on the value of the property stolen
from the Church, was greatly diminished ; the Chapter of
Saint-Denis was suppressed ; and the allowances of the
archbishop of Paris and of many other prelates were reduced
to derisory amounts. The year 1885 witnessed no new
persecutions, other than the withdrawal of “ salaries ” from
some hundreds of pastors who were accused of influencing
their voting parishioners at the previous elections. In 1886,
however, the work of the Educational League was completed.
We have seen that the Ferry Laws of 1879 banished all
members of religious organizations from the teaching staff
of the secondary and superior schools ; it remained for Paul
Bert to deliver what was perhaps the most effective of all
blows against Catholicism in France, by means of an elab-
orate bill which completely laicized primary education. Bert
had always frankly avowed his object. During the discus-
sion on the Ferry projects in 1879, he had been appointed to
draw7 up a report for a commission which rejoiced in such
members as the Masonic luminaries, Louis Blanc, Lockroy,
Lacretelle, Constans, Spuller, Floquet, and Duvaux. In
this report he had said : “ Instruction must be laic, exclur

sively laic : no teacher can be taken from among the members
of any religious association, whether that association bo
authorized or not. . . . The commissioners have not wished
to trouble themselves, as legislators, with the eternal dis-

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putes of metaphysicians (on such subjects as God, the
immortality of the soul, etc.). ... We have concerned our-
selves principally with the discipline of intelligence, being
sure that when natural science has taught the child how to
observe, when physical science has taught him how to prove,
when mathematical science has taught him how to draw con-
sequences, we shall have formed a mind which will be
free from prejudices, and one not easily seduced by sorceries
and superstitions. By the study of natural phenomena, the
child will be superior to foolish terrors, and to unworthy
-credulities (such as belief in future punishment) ... be
will never hope for a sudden miracle to cure the evils of
society, any more than he would ask it to cure his physical
troubles. The saviours will never seduce him ” (1). When
Bert’s bill on primary education had been presented to the
deputies, such orators as the Count de Mun, Lamarzelle,
and Bishop Freppel, combatted it most vigorously, and as
a last resort endeavored to draw some of its poison by ap-
posite amendments ; but the Chamber passed the measure
as the Lodges had drafted it. The Senate modified it
but slightly; and when the law was promulgated on Oct 30,
1886, it was found that all members of a religious com-
munity were to disappear from the primary schools, as they
already had been expelled from the others ; and that there-
after no religious could teach in a public school. Such
was the remedy which Bert and his brethren prescribed for
a society which was afflicted with the disease of Catholicism.
Article VII. had failed ; but the Bertian substitute was a
preventative, said its author, “ against the phylloxera of
modern society.” Therefore it was that at a banquet of the
General Council of Yonne, he offered the toast : “ I drink to
the inventor who gave us the sulphate of carbon to banish
the phylloxera of the vine ; and I also drink to the framer of
that Article VII. which would banish the phylloxera of
Catholicism.”

Having given a succinct account of the chief causes

(l i In this report Bert proposed thut the following provision should be enacted by the
Assembly : “ The municipalities shall become owners of all legacies or donations which
shall have been made to schools or asylums on condition that they should be directed by
religious.”

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

which have contributed to render the name of the Third
French Republic so distressing to the ears of all faithful
children of the Spouse of Christ, we shall devote a special
chapter to one of the most lamentable features in the anti-
Catholic legislation of that government — that which insti-
tuted compulsory military service on the part of the clergy.
Now we would ask the attention of the student to the
Encyclical Nobilissima GaUorum Gens which Pope Leo XIII.
issued in June, 1884 — a document which portrays the history
of the relations during the previous few years between the
Apostolic See and France ; which recapitulates in a most
solemn manner the evils inflicted on the Church by those
who guide the destinies of the Eldest Daughter of the
Church ; and which finally indicates the causes of those
evils, and assigns their remedies. Naturally the Pontiff
begins by reminding the world of the Christian glories
which have pre-eminently distinguished France ; of the
praises which, more than any other nation, France has re-
ceived from the Sovereign Pontiffs ; of the gifts which France
has received from God in the natural order ; and then His
Holiness laments that “ sometimes France has forgotten her-
self, and has neglected the duties which God imposed on
her.” However, the Pontiff consolingly remarks, “France
has never given herself entirely to such madness, nor has
she forgotten herself for a long time.” But now, we are
reminded, in the entire extent of Christendom there circu-
lates the poison of wicked doctrine — a doctrine which aims
at the complete destruction of every Christian institution ;
and in France the evil presents itself in the guise of a heter-
odox philosophy which has given birth to a spirit of
immoderate liberty, and in the form of a secret society which
has sworn the death of Catholicism. The Pope insists that
“ no State can be prosperous, if virtue and religion are
languishing ” ; for without the idea of God, authority and
law lose their force, governments become tyrannies, the
governed become rebels — such are the consequences of a
forgetfulness of God. Again, unless society has recourse to
God, its Protector, it cannot hope for His blessing. History
demonstrates this fact, and most especially is the fact

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THE FRENCH REPUBLIC A PERSECUTOR OF THE CHURCH. 12 T

shown by the history of France during the last hundred v
years. Then the Father of Christendom shows how for the
family, the basis of society, it is necessary that a Christian
education be given to the child ; and how it has been on
account of this necessity that the Church has always con-
demned the theory of a “ neutral ” education. Uninfluenced
by a belief in a God who is Creator, Rewarder, and Punish-
er, the young will never bend beneath a rule that commands
even a decent life ; habituated to a refusal of nothing to
their passions, the young will easily be a source of trouble
to the State. Confining his reflections thenceforward more*
especially to the needs of the State, the Pontiff reminds us
that among men there are two societies which are thorough-
ly independent, each in its own sphere. These societies
are the temporal and the spiritual ; but we must not forget
that there are certain “mixed matters ” in which each of
these societies naturally has an interest, and concerning a
regulation of which they must both come to an agreement.
This need was understood in France by the civil authorities,
after the subsidence of the revolutionary turmoils in the
beginning of the nineteenth century ; and therefore the two
powers, spiritual and temporal, agreed on that Concordat,
in which Pope Pius VII. showed so much condescension in
favor of the French government. The results were happy,
both for the Church in a revival of the Christian traditions,
and for the State in the receipt of a promise of tranquillity.
Such a result, remarks His Holiness, 4s much to be desired
in these days of revolutionary enterprise ; now, more than
at any other time, the State ought to ask for the beneficent
intervention of the Church. Nevertheless, the Head of the
Church is compelled to admit that the acts of the French
government are now of such a nature that they indicate an
imminent rupture of the Concordat ; and he calls attention
to his letters to Cardinal Guibert in reference to the per-
secution of the religious orders, as well as to his letter to
President Grevy on the general hostility of the republic to
the Church. Then the Pope praises the courage of the
French bishops in the present circumstances, and he
especially commends their efforts for the establishment of

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HI8T0KY.

Catholic schools, despite the enormous revenues of the
governmental establishments, against which they must con-
tend. He repels as a calumny the Masonic assertion that in
these efforts lies a proof that the bishops are enemies of
France ; he insists that in defending the interests of souls,
the prelates are simply performing their duty. And the
Pontiff grows warm in his commendations of the zealous and
charitable French priesthood, as well as in his acknowledg-
ment of the heroic courage of so many of the French laity.
On June 27, Leo XIII. addressed a Brief to the bishop of
Perpignan, accentuating the counsels giv6n in this Encycli-
cal, and especially deploring the political divisions among
the French laymen — divisions which prevented their pre-
senting a united front at the polls, and thus crushing the
Masonic hydra which was strangling France. The so-much-
needed union, says the Pontiff, will easily be consummated,
if Frenchmen will take their motives from the Encyclicals
issued by Pius IX. and by himself, but especially from the
Syllabus promulgated by his predecessor. “ Let Frenchmen
-do away with disputes, the objects of which are merely
private interests — interests which are of secondary im-
portance, when compared with matters which belong to a
more elevated order.” We shall find occasion to give some
attention to these counsels of Leo XHI. to the French laity,
when we come to treat of the general trend of his pontificate.

It has been well said that the history of the modem
Revolution is but one enormous lie, and one perpetual
hypocrisy ; and certainly the record of the dissension between
the Church and the Third French Republic does not indi-
cate that the latter institution is an exception. Mendacity
and hypocrisy were needed indeed for the assertion that the
persecuting decrees of Ferry, Bert, and Co. were merely
actuations of existing laws.” All that was most honest
among the liberals of France manifested its disgust toward
this hypocrisy. Laboulaye cried : “ They exhume the edicts
of the olden kings, the decrees of the Reign of Terror, those

of the Caesars, etc All is acceptable to the democrats,

when they desire to strangle liberty, or to hunt the Jesuits.
As for those ordinances which recognized liberty of con-

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science, religious liberty, freedom of teaching, the right of
association, all these do not exist for our democrats. ‘ All
for them ; nothing for any others,’ but especially ‘nothing for
religion ! ’ — That is their watchword.” And the injustice of
such procedures caused Jules Simon to say, concerning the
majority of * his brethren : “ To-day the republicans imi-
tate the adversaries whom they once combatted ; it seems to
me that when they attain to power, they have learned only
how to proscribe. . . . Do not make us say that you do not
love liberty, whenever it troubles you. You do not love lib-
erty, unless you are willing that your adversaries should
have it. If you love liberty only for yourselves, you do not
love it, you do not even know what it means ; you are unworthy
of understanding it” (1). It was an easy task for two ver-
itable luminaries of French jurisprudence, M. Rousse of
Paris and M. de Demolombe of Caen, to demonstrate in
two masterly juridical Consultations on the decrees of March
29, 1880, that the plea of those decrees being founded on
“ existing laws ” was a cowardly hypocrisy ; and their dec-
laration was endorsed by more than two thousand lawyers,
among whom were all of the most illustrious and most dis-
interested members of the French bar and magistracy (2).
Certainly the Masonic conspirators against the Church
could not have trusted greatly in any “ existing laws,” when
they devised their new Article VII. ; and it was only when
the Senate had rejected that article as too despotic, that
men were informed of these “ existing laws ” — ordinances
which “existed” with so little of vitality, that in order to
give any force to them, two new decrees were made as sub-
stitutes for the condemned Article VII. In their search
after “ existing laws ” which might crush the “ clericals,”
the democratic despots raked among the rubbish of that past
which they continually cursed. They seized on all the
arbitrary decrees and violent measures of the two Napoleons,

(1) It was this plea for true liberty that caused the most distinguished and most learned
man in the republican party to become an object of detestation to his olden comrades.
Smarting under their ingratitude. Jules Simon said : “ It is we who defend the republic—
we who are trying to preserve it from the stain of despotism ; and it is precisely because
of that effort that we are, I will not say discussed, hut reviled and outraged.”

(2) Rivaux : Course of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. iii., p. 674. Paris, 1883.

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STUDEE8 IN CHURCH HISTORY.

and hailed them as proper chastisements for the slaves of
Rome ; thus, as some one wrote at the time, presenting the
picture of “ Democracy licking the mud from the boots of
the Empire.” They even stirred up the debris of the royal-
ist Restoration which they anathematized more bitterly
than they cursed the two Empires ; hoping to find their
hatred justified by the acts of a government which they pro-
claimed as “ clerical.” They found a number of ordinances
which were hostile to freedom of education, and which the
Universitarian monopoly and the threats of revolutionary lib-
eralism had extorted from two feeble monarchs ; and with
these testimonies they essayed to convince the world that
even the government of the Restoration, “ clerical ” though it
was, had for its own safety been compelled to restrain the
Jesuits and their similars (1). Their task was easy when
they peered into the pile of documents bequeathed to France
by the men who had travestied the Principles of 1789 ; here
they were rewarded by the discovery of laws which were
not only sanguinary, but more despotic and irreligious
than any which Satan had ever breathed into the mind of
man. Certainly these records, stained with the blood which,
as Taine observed, “ is the soul of the Revolution,” ought to
have satisfied the seekers of “ existing laws ” ; but they must
needs recur to the philosophistic, Masonic, and Jansenistic
parliaments of the eighteenth century. “ These democrats;”
reflects Paul Feval, “ experience no shame in donning the old
ducal wig of Choiseul, the favorite and accomplice of the Pom-
padour. They loudly applaud the judicial crimes of those
parliaments now styled by history ‘ the parliaments of Cho-
iseul-Pompadour ’ ; and they are happy in being able to imi-
tate, and to resuscitate those despots of the robe.” When a
similar enterprise, but one projected* on a much smaller
scale, was essayed in 1825, it was no more moderate anti-
clerical than Pierre Leroux, who said : “ That man does
not understand liberty who demands an execution of the

(1) “ In this case the lie is so barefaced that it might be considered a wicked pleasantry,
a revolutionary gamineric. For the revolution was wont to amuse itself with its victims.
We all know the little chant sung by the cannibals in the Caf£ de Foy at the Palais
Royal, while they squeezed the blood from the heart of Berth«errand then drank it:.
* There can be no feast, if the heart is absent.’ ” Rivaux ; htz. cit.% p. C77.

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olden parliamentary decrees against the Jesuits ; I shall
say more— he himself is guilty of Jesuitism.” Of course,
having whetted their appetites with the morsels dragged
from the graves of the Second Empire, the Restoration,
Napoleon I., the Revolution, and Louis XV., the democrats
of the Third Republic hastened to regale themselves with
the drippings from the caldron of Gallicanism, as it was pre-
pared during the reign of Louis XIV. Undoubtedly these
gentry had no more accurate idea of the meaning of Galli-
canism than that which is entertained by the average Protest-
ant ; but they knew that Gallicanism had been used by the
great Louis XIV. as an engine of war against some tem-
poral claims of Rome, and therefore they determined to imi-
tate the prince whom they especially abhorred. Then we
heard of dragoons being directed against harmless old men
of prayer and against convents, the sole defense of which
was the crucifix ; then we read of the siege of the Abbey of
Frigolet, so bravely conducted by a republican general.
The prospect of such scenes caused that serious republican,
Dufaure, to declare in full Senate : “ In the programme

openly displayed by an eminent republican deputy, a dis-
tinguished orator of the Chamber, I find that there are
projected against the Catholics all of the measures indicated
in those edicts of Louis XIV. which accompanied or fol-
lowed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.” Commenting;
on this appropriation of weapons from a Gallicanism which,
his comrades did not understand, Jules Simon said : “ The

Most Christian monarch had at least an excuse in his faith;
but you, you who represent free thought, and who therefore
do not claim to be the sole depositaries of absolute truths
you cannot pretend to share in a doctrinal unity. It will be
said of you that you use repression for the sake of negation.”
But Paul Bert, the champion of the Third Republic in its.
deliberate contempt of logic, did not quail before this ar-
raignment by Jules Simon. With phenomenal cynicism he
accepted the allegation : “ Yes ; we are the negation. Prot-
estantism, Jansenism, all other heresies, are merely partial
negations, half-measures of days long vanished. We are a
negation which is total and radical.” And then, as though

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

be had heard St. Augustine’s cry : * Catholicism is integral

truth,” that is, a real and total affirmation , Bert added :
“ The question between us (the Church and the Third Repub-
lic) is one of life and death.” No wonder that Gambetta
felt that he was justified in proclaiming : “ Clericalism is
our enemy.

CHAPTER Y.

A FIGHTING CLERGY AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL CANONS.

In 1889 the Third French Republic resolved to drive
the clergy into the army, its ostensible purpose being an
enforcement of an equality of all the citizens before the law,
but its real intention being to weaken that “ clericalism ”
which Gambetta, its most brilliant champion, had designated
as “ the enemy,” to be combatted with tooth and nail. Then
a novel lesson in ecclesiastical jurisprudence was given to the
Catholic world by the Chamber of Deputies. Hitherto it
had been generally understood that the Church, so “ abhorret
a sanguine — is so averse to the shedding of human blood,”
that she does not allow her priests, or even her simple
clerics, to enter the military sendee, unless as chaplains or
nurses, or in similar guise. The name of the new professor
of Canon Law was Hanotaux. According to this parliament-
ary canonist, neither ecclesiastical tradition nor the Canons
are opposed to the enrolment of priests and seminarians in
the fighting ranks of the army. Does not the great Jansen-
ist leader, Saint-Cyran, so insist ? Is not the Abbe Hous-
say, the editor of that one-time famous Tribune of the Clergy
which was so Catholic that the French bishops were con-
strained to condemn it, of the same mind? With these
“ authorities,” then, to support his audacity, our deputy pro-
claimed to his amazed but admiring colleagues that the
Catholic episcopate and priesthood stultified themselves
when they branded the infamous project as destructive of
clerical discipline, as scandalous and sacrilegious, and as
expressly condemned by the Canons. In order to arm our-
selves against the presumedly effective engines with which the

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A FIGHTING CLERGY AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL CANONS. 133

confident deputy was equipped by Sain t-Cyran and others of
that ilk, we shall open the immense arsenal of controversial
weapons furnished by the Collection of Canons . But first
we must anticipate the thought of the reader, who probably
has been recalling to mind some of the instances of cleri-
cal, aye, of even episcopal fighting with the sword of the
flesh in the halcyon days of old. In the first place, these
instances are by no means as plentiful as is frequently sup-
posed ; and even though they all, and a hundred times their
number, were capable of verification by the light of history,,
they would stand forth, not as being in accord with law and
custom, but rather as abnormal examples born of peculiar
circumstances. From the very beginning of the early Mid-
dle Age, the piety of the great and wealthy had endowed
the churches and monasteries with lands ; the interest of
sovereigns had prompted them to give the rank of temporal
lords to men upon whose fidelity they could depend. There-
fore nearly every bishop and abbot was a feudal dignitary r
and subject, as such, to the same obligations, either person-
ally or by substitute, as the secular noble ; giving, of course,
before he received his investure, hominium or homage to hie
suzerain. Undoubtedly there were many inconveniences
in the system, and also many abuses which gave rise, in
the eleventh century, to the vexatious question of Investi-
tures ; but it was considered, in the beginning, that the
inconveniences were more than counterbalanced by the eleva-
tion of the prelates to a position among the temporal rulers
of the earth. And in nearly every case the obligation of a
military service was discharged by a lay substitute, styled, for
that purpose, the prelate’s “ man.” Again, very many abbeys
were frequently usurped by laymen, who assumed the title
of abbots, and personally fulfilled an abbot’s temporal duties.
In such cases it should not be surprising to find a record
stating that such and such an abbot fought in such and such a*
campaign. And even in the case of some abbots who were
canonically elected, we read that sometimes they were1
impelled, by the exigencies of the feudal system, to provide
themselves with military protectors, if they wished to escape
spoliation. Recourse, therefore, was had to some powerful

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8TUDIE8 IN CHURCH HISTORY.

secular lord, who would lead the vassals of the abbey in war,
receiving, in reward, some of the abbatial territories in fief,
and bearing as his standard the abbatial insignia (1). In
these instances we also encounter allegations of military
experience on the part of abbots. Certainly the appear-
ance of clerics in the military ranks must have been quite
exceptional, even in the early Middle Age, since the olden
annals inform us that veneration for the sacred character
of the priesthood caused the soldiers to flee in terror from a
field which had been stained by such a sacrilege as the kill-
ing of a minister of God. We read in the Capitularies of
Charlemagne a prohibition of soldiering on the part of cler-
ics, and the emperor seems to have thought that priestly
combatants were not a source of strength to an army:
“ Those nations and princes have never been victorious in
the long run, who have allowed priests to fight in their
armies. Certain rulers \n Gaul, Spain, and Lombardy, have
thought that they could grant such permission ; but -the auda-
cious sacrilege brought about their defeat and the loss of
their patrimonies. I would rather be victorious at the head
of a few professional warriors, than be forced to retreat with
a large number of impermissible soldiers.”

But let us consult the Canons of the Church, if we desire
to penetrate her mind on this subject. In the year 453,
the Council of Arles declared that clerics who entered upon
military service were properly deprived of their benefices,
that is, in popular parlance, they were suspended. Pope
Innocent I. ordered the fathers of the Council of Toledo, in
406, to refuse Holy Orders to all who had served in the
army ; and he wrote to the same effect to Victricius, bishop
of Rouen. In 538, the Council of Orleans excommunicated
clerics who, having doffed tlie military insignia, resumed
them. In 743, a German Council, held at Ratisbon, forbade
“ the servants of God ” to march against the enemy, unless
as celebrants of the Divine Mysteries, and it allowed each
prince to have in his train, for that purpose, two bishops and
a certain number of chaplains. We find St. Boniface and
Archbishop Egbert of York prohibiting, in 747, the English

.(1) Boutaric , Military Inst Mict ion# of France. Paris, 1863.

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A FIGHTING CLERGY AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL CANONS. 135

clergy to bear arms. The Capitularies of 789 insist that
clerics carry no weapons ; even the army chaplains are bound
by this regulation ; the parish-priests will send “ their men ”
to the king’s aid, well equipped, but they themselves must
be content with praying for the national welfare. In 816
the Council of Aix pronounced military dignities incom-
patible with the ecclesiastical state. A Council of Meaux
deposed, in 845, every priest who accepted military employ-
ment. Archbishop Herard of Tours decreed deposition and
imprisonment against any clergyman taking part in an armed
sedition. When Charles the Bald and Louis of Germany
excused themselves to Pope Nicholas I., for not sending
their prelates to a Council, alleging in extenuation of their
remissness that said prelates were then engaged in opera-
tions against pirates, the Pontiff replied : “ The duty of the
soldiers of Christ is to serve Christ ; let the soldiers of the
world serve the world.” Several English Councils depose
an ecclesiastic who has killed a person ; and he must fast
for ten years, five of which are to be on bread and water.
Excommunication is pronounced against clerics who bear
arms, by Councils at Rlieims in 1049, at Rome in 1078, and
at London in 1175, and 1268. The prelates of Hungary,
assembled at Buda in 1279, forbid all fighting to priests,
unless in defense of their churches or country ; and even in
those cases, they must not attack, and they must never com-
bat in person. Finally, the General Council of Trent (1545-
63) confirmed all these prohibitory enactments, taking care,
also, not to recognize in ecclesiastics the right, which many
canonists have claimed for them, to repel force by force.

No Catholic can be at a loss to understand the aversion
entertained by the Church at the prospect of her priests
shedding human blood, for he realizes how pure should be
the hands, how gentle the disposition of him who handles
the Body of Christ. And so possessed is the Church by
this idea, that she turns aside her ministers from everything
that may tend toward a deadening of their sensibilities.
Thus she interdicts their presence at duels, and even at cap-
ital executions, unless, in the latter case, they attend in the
capacity of strengtheners and consolers of the condemned in

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

their dread emergency. Neither can they assist at surgical
operations, if curiosity is the impelling motive. They are
not even allowed to hunt ; but the reader need not take scan-
dal if he meets, some day, his pastor enjoying a bit of recre-
ation with the aid of a fowling piece, or mayhap evidencing,,
in a practical way, some little sympathy with the joys of the
gentle Isaac Walton. When the fathers of certain Councils
prohibited hunting to the clergy, saying that “Esau was
addicted to it because he was a sinner, ” probably, in their
own minds, they added the qualifying clause, “ saving all due
respect to St. Hubert,” whom our reader knows as a famous
sportsman. Indeed, some decrees expressly state, and all
canonists so interpret the law, that only hunting cum strepitic
is forbidden to ecclesiastics, that is, the species of danger-
ous and noisy diversion which goes by the name of “ the
chase.”

But some innocent may wonder how we are to account, if
the Church is so determined in this matter, for those Mili-
tary Religious Orders, such as the Templars, the Hospita-
lers, the Knights of Calatrava, etc., which the Church herself
founded, in the ages of faith, for the defense of Christendom
against the ferocious and uncivilizing hordes of Islam. Such
an objection would betray a knowledge of history such as is
derived from the theatre or the novel, rather than from
proper and reliable sources. In his entrancing novel, The
Talisman , Scott evokes from his imagination the figure of
a soldier-priest, a grand-master of the Templars ; and rep-
resents him as entering upon an adminstration of the Sacra-
ments, when fresh from the battle-field. This is but one
among a hundred instances of gross ignorance of Catholic
laws and customs, evinced by our charming Wizard of Fic-
tion. The Military Religious Orders were certainly relig-
ious organizations in the strict sense of the term, their mem-
bers being bound by the solemn monastic vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience. But their fighting members, the
chevaliers, were not priests. A man could be a Templar or a
Knight of St. John, or such like, just as to-day. he can be a
Benedictine, a Dominican, a Jesuit, or some other kind of
religious, without entering the priesthood. Each of these

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A FIGHTING CLERGY AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL CANONS. 137

religious military associations was composed of three classes
of brethren : the knights, who performed military duty ; the
chaplains, who ministered to the spiritual needs of the com-
munity ; and the squires, pages, grooms, and menials, who
followed the chevaliers to the field, if so commanded (1).
The Military Religious Orders, therefore, furnish no argu-
ment for those who contend that the Church could consist-
ently allow her priests to enter the fighting ranks of an
army. But do not the bellicose Pontiffs, such as St. Leo
IX., and Julius II., and the many scarlet-hatted commanders,
such as Vitelleschi, Albornoz, and D’Aubusson, militate
against our position ? Not at all. St. Leo did not himself
draw the material sword when he fought the battle of
Civitella in defense of his people, and of the patrimony of the
Church, but remained in prayer on an eminence overlooking
the field (2). As to Julius IL and such of thG cardinalitial
commanders as were in Holy Orders (for many of these
latter, though cardinals, were laymen), we do not read that
they themselves personally entered the melee ; and this
absence of testimony in favor of the contrary supposition is
a sufficient justification of our position.

There is a poetico-religious aspect in which one may
profitably view the picture furnished us by the anti-clericals-
now dominant in the government of France, of a forced asso-
ciation of priest and soldier in barrack and field. There is a
kind of natural grandeur in the idea, but which the Masonic
lodges, of course, did not perceive when they conceived
what is one of the most grotesque efforts of modern statecraft.
Both priest and soldier are the most magnificent ideals which
can be offered to the admiration of men ; there is a strange
identity of sublimity between these principles apparently so
contrary ; with both priest and soldier the greatest glory is
attained by sacrifice. The soldier devotes his life to his
country ; the priest dedicates his to the good of souls. Each
is the protector of civilization. The soldier is the apostle of
the God of battles ; the priest is the apostle of the God of

(1) Lives of the Grand-Masters of the Holy Order of St. John of Jerusalem , JFn'f-
ten by the Knight-Commander , Brother Jerome MaruUl. Naples, 163#.— See also the?
History of the Templars . by Dupuy. Paris, 1630.

(2) See our Vol. 11., ch. 10.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

peace. But we are wandering ; the idea of a Christian sol-
dier has invaded our imagination, and alas ! not every French
barrack can produce a Drouoi And it is not a Christian
soldier that the Third Republic, perhaps in punishment for
its other crimes, is ambitious of forming. It pretends that
the new law will render priestly vocations more Sincere ; but
we do not know that the French Chamber is such an adept
in things of the sanctuary, that it can truthfully exclaim,
“ fxperto crede” especially since it assigns as a reason for its
confidence the belief that the ecclesiastical ranks will now
lose definitively the many (?) who would have become priests,
merely to escape the conscription. And on the other hand,
this fancied judge of priestly character flatters itself that
many of the clerical recruits will become hardened by their
military experience, and will therefore adopt what it styles
“republicanism” for a religion. Let us hope that the san-
guine expectations of a sagacious Catholic publicist (1) may
be realized, and that though some of the clerical conscripts
may become “ hardened ” even unto roughness, “ they will
not adopt the principles of Masonry, but will be hardened
in their faith and their apostolate.” How easy it would
have been, had the anti-clericals been animated by a mere
modicum of sincerity in what does duty for the heart in
their breasts, to have ultilized the pretendedly-needed ser-
vices of the few ecclesiastical recruits in a sphere which
they would have willingly entered, and for which the mili-
tary history of France has shown that they are pre-emi-
nently fitted ! And for a time it did appear that the hospital
and ambulance service was to be again benefited by their well-
proven and admitted devotion ;.but at last the Senate (what
a grand name for such little men !) determined that the clerics
should be soldiers, and the priest-eaters were satisfied.

(1) D’Argill ; The Centenary of 1788. Paris, 1888.

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CHAPTEE YI.

THE PONTIFICATE OF LEO XIIL

On Feb. 18, 1878, ten days after the demise of Pope Pius
IX., sixty-one cardinals entered into Conclave (1). One of
the first acts of Their Eminences was to forward to each
member of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican a
protest against the Sardinian usurpation of the Pontifical
States, and against all the attendant and consequent meas-
ures which were injurious to the’ Church. The ensuing
election was effected with unusual celerity, being consummated
on the third ballot. It was thought by many that this haste
was due to the determination of the cardinals to avoid any
interference on the part of the German and Italian govern-
ments, as well as to a wish to establish a precedent which
would eventuate in a disappearance of the “ Eight of Veto ”
on the nomination of some particular candidate, allowed by
the Holy See to certain Catholic powers. It is certain that
Bismarck had conducted, during several years, diplomatic
intrigues which were expected by him to result in a subordina-
tion of the freedom of the electors to his wishes (2). Nor
were these intentions of the German chancellor restricted to
the confines of his. own bosom, and to a participation on the
part of his agents ; many were the anonymous pamphlets
which then appeared in Berlin, Munich, and Prague, advo-
cating a German and Italian interference in the next Con-
clave as a matter of right, and most of these works bore
intrinsic evidence of an inspiration from the cabinet of Ber-

(1) Wo give the names of the electors, arranged according to their nationality : Italians :
Amat, Di Pietro, Sacconi, Guldi, Bilio, Morichinl, Pecci, Asquint, Carafa di Traetto,
Antonncci, Paneblanco, De Luca, Buonaparte, Ferrlerl, Berardi, Monaco la Valetta, Chigl,
Franchl, Oreglladl Santo 8tefano, Martlnelli, Anticl-Mattel, Glannelli, Simeoni, Bartollnl,
d’Avanzo, Apuzzo, Canossa, Seraflni, Parocchi, Moretti, Mertel, CaterinUConsolint, Borro-
meo, Randl, Pacca.Nlna, Sbaretti, Pellegrini. FYenchmen : Donnet, Regnier, Pltra, Bon-
nechose, Guibert, Caverot, Falloux du Coudray. Spaniards: Moreno, Benavides, Garcia
Gil, Paya y Rico. Portvgvese : Moraes Cardoso. Austrians: 8cbwarzenberg, Simor,
Mlbalowtz, Kutschker. Pole: Ledochowskl. Germans: Hohenlobe, Franzelin. Bel-
gian : Dechamps. Englishmen : Howard, Manning.

(2) Lucius Lector ; The Conclave : Its Origin , History, and Organization , ch. 13.
Paris, 1894.

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lin (1). The Bismarckian schemes had not been ignored by
the semi-official journals and periodicals of the Vatican ; in
the 088ervcitore Romano of June 29, 1872, we read : “ We do
not know how much truth there may be in the rumors to the
effect that the Holy See has announced to the privileged
governments that it will no longer tolerate the “ Veto ” which,
through sheer condescension, it has hitherto permitted those-
powers to enjoy. If the reports are well-founded, the
Church has simply taken measures of precaution against the
snares prepared by certain of her enemies. At the time
when the Holy See conceded a limited kind of ‘ Veto ’ to
France, Spain, and Austria (2), the governments of those
countries were essentially Catholic ; and then heresy and
indifferentism were not regarded by those cabinets as worthy
of an equal footing with Catholicism. Can we suppose that
the Church will ever entrust her interests, even indirectly,
to men like Thiers, Andrassy , Zorilla, or to some more wretched
miscreant (a Bismarck, for instance) ? Because of this
impossibility the Holy See repulsed the efforts of certain
sovereigns who wished to take part in the Council of the
Vatican.”

(1* Io 1888. as If in anticipation of the Conclave which will elect a successor to Leo XIII.,
certain Gorman pamphleteers re-opened the agitation, originally excited by their party,
concerning the “ Right of Veto.” In a series of documents which he transcribed from the
Archives of the Vatican and of Vienna, Dr. Wahrmund endeavored to find a basis for an
opinion to the effect tbat time had given to the exercise of the “ Right of Veto ” the prerog-
atives of a veritable ” right founded on custom.” Such a pretention found many valiant
adversaries ; even in Germany, erudites like Lingens and Smgmuller showed that the gen-
eral spirit of Canon Law opposes the exercise of the ” Veto ” in question, even when that
privilege is a prerogative of truly Catholic princes.

CZ) Certain authors have claimed the right of the ” Veto ” for Naples and for Portugal.
They have asserted that . lng John V. of Portugal (17UC-1700) obtained it in a Papal Hull ;
but no edition of the Btillarium contains the document. The claim of the Neapolitan
monarch is advocated by the Germans, Philipps ( Church Law* Vol. v., p. 868), and 8chulte
( System of Canon Law* p. 199) ; but their theory is demolished by the testimony of
King Ferdinand I. In the instructions given to Cardinal Ruffo, when that prelate was
about to depart for the Conclave of 1823, the monarch wrote : ” Since the express right of
exclusion docs not belong to the crown of the Two Sicilies, that right being reserved to
the courts of France, Spain, and Austria, we trust in your dexterity to use every means
which your talents may suggest, so that you may be able to exercise a tacit exclusive, by
means of your adherents and friends” (Cl poli.ett a ; Political Memoirs* p. 188). Prob-
ably the reason for the advocacy of the Neapolitan claims by certain German authors,
some of whom style themselves Catholics, lies in the fact that His Majesty of Sardinia
claims the succession of the Neapolitan Bourbons, and would therefore have a right to an
'* exclusive,” in the event of the Neapolitan claim being supported. It is amusing to hear
the German S&gmuller proclaiming that the right of King Humbert, as well as that of the
German emperor, to the ” exclusive,” is an ” open question ” (Papal Elections* p. 42)-

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Certain German publicists have insisted that the “ Eight
of Veto ” is part of the “ Eight of Eegalia ” which, as they
claim, is inherent in every civil sovereignty (1) ; and they
contend that sovereigns have a special right to this “ Veto,”
because of the dangers that the election of a hostile Pope
might entail upon their peoples. Thus, for instance, Ley, in
The Exclusive which the Emperor Exercises , published in
Barthel’s Legal Works (2) ; and Hammer, in his Right of a
Catholic Prince in Sacred Matters, in Schmidt’s Treasury (3).
These sentiments are mere echoes of Puffendorfian theories,
theories which persistently ignore the value of positive
stipulations ; and they were revived in a pamphlet published
in Munich in 1872, entitled The Rights of Rulers in the
Conclave . This pamphlet was generally ascribed to the
pen of Count Greppi, the Italian representative at the
Bavarian court. Bismarck had just begun his “ War for
Civilization ” ; and as was afterward revealed by the Amim
affair, had formed the design of hurling the forces of
Cfesar against the Papacy. All the German governmental
journals acclaimed the just-mentioned pamphlet; for the
death of Pius IX. seemed then to be imminent. It was the
appearance of this incendiary lucubration that impelled
Windhorst to pronounce, on June 14, 1872, these words in
the German parliament : “ It is now a question of life or

death. They are trying to organize a National Church, to
separate us Catholics from the Holy See, and in the next
Conclave, to destroy or to travesty the Papacy.” Of course,
in combatting the Caesarian pretensions, some Catholic
authors have been carried away by enthusiasm, and have been
guilty of gross exaggeration. This fault was especially
noticeable in France, during and after the days of the great-
est of Bismarck’s enterprises ; but the reaction against the
ideas of the “ War for Civilization ” produced even among
Italian Catholic publicists a few who were like the French-
men who “ were more Catholic than the Pope.” This small
but enthusiastic school discerned in the “ Eight of Veto ”
only a usurpation of the right of the Church — an abuse which
the Church tolerated, just as the individual often submits to

/l) 8ee our Vol. iv., p. 211. (2) Bamberg, 1771. (3) Heldelburg, 1774.

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the tyranny of superior force. Such is not the doctrine'
of the traditional Roman school. This school denies
that any sovereigns possess, in the matter of this “Veto,”
any right, properly so-called ; but it admits that there was
good reason wherefore the Church allowed the “ Veto ”
to be introduced and exercised by certain princes. This
school admits the right of a sovereign, one who is a true
son of the Church, to present to the Conclave, if he has
received the permission, a “ friendly remonstrance ” against
the election of a cardinal who, in the prince’s judgment,
might jeopardize the good relations between that prince and
the Holy See. As the idea is expressed by Moroni, who is a
good representative of Roman ideas, whatever one may think
of the Historical Dictionary which was composed when
historical criticism was not the science which it is now, tlie
privileged sovereign’s action in the premises is a mere
‘‘tolerated custom.” In fine, as the Civiltd Cattolica re-
marks, the exercise of the “ Veto ” never entailed on the
cardinal-electors any obligation injustice ; but it did entail
a sort of obligation in 'prudence (1). Before we dismiss this
subject of the “ Right of Exclusion,” we must remind the
reader that said privilege is not founded in written law ; no
Bull, no Conciliar enactment, no pontifical document, have
ever been adduced as its justification. It became a custom,
probably in tlie latter part of the Middle Age. No work
treating of its origin is of earlier date than that by Adarzo
de Santander, bishop of Verona, printed in 1660 ; and not
before the eighteenth century were any really critical inves-
tigations in the matter undertaken.

It is not improbable that the true reason for the brief
duration of the Conclave of 1878, nearly the shortest in his-
tory, was not so much any anticipation of possible inter-
ference on the part of the foes of the Holy See, as it was the
consequence of the fact that almost at once one of the
preferred nominees seemed to nearly all the electors <£> be
the choice of Providence. When the first ballot was taken
on the morning of Feb. 19, twenty-three votes were cast for
Cardinal Gioacchino Pecci, Camerlingo of Holy Roman.

(1) Series vlii.. Vol. vli.. 1872.

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THE PONTIFICATE OF LEO XHL

14S

Church, while the next favorite candidate received only seven..
At the second ballot, taken the same day, the votes for
Cardinal Pecci amounted to thirty-eight ; and on the following
day, the third ballot showed that the election was consum-
mated, Pecci having received forty-four votes, more than the
necessary two-thirds. Cardinal Donnet, who sat by the side
of Pecci during the voting, used to say that when the name
of the cardinal-chamberlain was announced with startling
repetition, the future Pontiff shed abundant tears, and his
trembling hand refused to retain its grasp on his pen. The
Frenchman picked up the pen, and handing it to his pallid
colleague, he whispered : “ Courage ! This is not a question
of you ; the interests of the Church and the future of the
world are concerned ” (1). When the moment arrived for
his assumption of the name by which he was thereafter to
be known in the annals of the Church, the new Pontiff
announced that he assumed the name of Leo XIII.

Gioacchino (Joachim) Vincenzo Raffaele, sixth child and
fourth son of Count, Luigi Pecci by his wife, Anna Prosperi
Buzi, was born on March 2, 1810, in Carpineio, a little town
in the region once inhabited by those Volscians wTith whom
Rome was obliged to contend so persistently in her early
days. The Pecci family had been distinguished in the annals
of Carpineto since 1531, when Antonio Pecci immigrated
thither from Siena, to which republic his ancestors had gone*
from Cortona about the year 1300. Genealogists who have
traced the history of the Pecci, remark that in each generation
the family has ever been noted for integrity, prudence,,
patriotism, and love of religion. The biographers of Leo
XIII. dilate on the number of Pecci whose history is inter-
twined with that of the Sienese republic ; we shall merely
note that undeniable as are the civic and social glories of the
Pecci, their most solid reason for complacency is found in
the fact that, like so many of the olden patrician families of
Papal Rome, they have contributed a notable quota to the
most noble of all aristocracies, that of the saints of the
Church of God. Blessed Pietro Pecci, the founder of the

(1) T’Serclaes ; Pope Leo Xlll. ; His Life , ami His Religious , Political and Social*
Acts , Vol. i., cb. 5.

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Hermits of St. Augustine, a Spanish order by its origin, was
a grandson of a Pecci who had emigrated from Siena to the
Land of the Cid, and had received the religious habit in
Avignon at the hands of Pope Gregory XI., who approved
the Constitutions of his order. Then we meet, if we happen
to visit Carpineto, the portrait of Blessed Margaret Pecci,
vested with the habit of the Servites of Mary. And finally,
the records of the Society of Jesus show us, among the many
indubitable martyrs whom the Church has not formally
recognized as saints, the name of Bernardino Pecci, who
sealed with his blood the story of his labors in India for
the propagation of the faith (1). On the side of his mother’s
family, Leo XIII. was descended from a historical personage
who claimed indeed to be of illegitimate imperial stock, but
•who was incontestably plebeian (2). In a Chronicle of Corif
dedicated to the Conservators of Borne in 1631, it is recorded
that “ In the olden time the Prosperi were named Rienzi,
because of their descent from Cola di Rienzi, the tribune of
the Roman people ” (3). Commenting .on the genealogical
tree of the Pecci, the Belgian biographer of Leo XIIL, Mgr.
T’Serclaes, pleasantly remarks that the drop of revolutionary
blood which coursed in the veins of Leo XIIL, joined to the
Pontiff’s descent from the Sienese republicans, might lead
some Liberal to announce that it was mere “ atavism ” which
led His Holiness to desire an amicable arrangement with the
Third French Republic.

The early studies of the future Pontiff were made in the
Jesuit College of Viterbo ; and the correspondence of the
professors with the Count and Countess Pecci shows that
the boy was extraordinarily pious, as well as brilliant and
solid in matters of study (4). The bishop of Viterbo, Mgr.

(1) T’Serclaes ; loe. cif., Vol. 1., p. 11. (2) 8ee our Vol. 11., p. 651.

(8) Angelo, son of the tribune, fled to Corl, and found In that region a family which was
known as the Prosperi. Popular Life of Leo XU /., published In the Roman Review,
La Palestra del Clero.

(4) It is interesting to note that while Gioacchino was still a mere child, he manifested
that love and grasp of pure La Unity which distinguished his mature years. He was twelve
years of age when Father Vincent Pavani, the Jesuit provincial, visited the college of
Viterbo. Gioacchino, who was then called by his second name, Vincent, addressed to the
guest the following tasteful epigram :

“ Nomine Vincenti quo tu Pavane vocarls
Parvulus atque hifans Peecius ispe vocor;

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145

Lolli, writing to the countess when Gioacchino was twelve
years old, said that if God preserved the boy’s health, he
would be “ an honor to himself, to his family, and to his
country.” In 1824, Gioacchino and his brother, Giuseppe,
were summoned to Borne for the purpose of bidding farewell
to their mother, who had gone to the Eternal City for superior
medical attention. When the fond parent, vested in the
habit of the Third Order of Sh Francis, had gone to her
reward, Giuseppe entered the Society of Jesus ; and Gioac-
chino resumed his studies in the Roman College, which had
lately re-opened its doors, and was managed by the sons of St.
Ignatius. Having completed a brilliant course of rhetoric,
Gioacchino began his ecclesiastical studies under the tuition of T
such professors as Perrone, Patrizi, Kollman, and Van Ever-
broeck. One of these professors, Patrizi, after fifty years of
teaching, had the happiness of seeing his pupil seated on the
Chair of Peter. While following the courses of the Roman
College, our young Abbate resided with an uncle in the Palazzo
Muti near Ara Coeli ; but nothing can be more fantastical than
the picture drawn by a certain biographer, when he rep-
resents the future Pope as frequenting the drawing-rooms of
society while he bemoans the debasement of Italy, and is
preparing to enter the priesthood merely because he is sick
of the world (1). His time was devoted to study ; and all
his correspondence, as well as the testimony of his tutors
and companions, shows that he was conservative in regard to
the political aflairs of his day, and that he was sincerely
respectful to all legitimate authority. In 1832, the Abbate
Pecci took his degree of Doctor in Sacred Theology, and
entered the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, an institution
especially created for the training of such students as aspire
to the positions which are open to the Roman prelatura (2).

As a student of this, as it may be styled, diplomatic training-

Quas es virtutes magnas Pavane secutus

Oh ! Vtinam passim Peccim ifvte sequi.”

(1) Boyer d’Agen ; Leo XIII. In the Eyes of His Contemporaries. Paris, 1892.

(2) Mgr. Giuseppe Pecci, a prelate who had enjoyed the confidence of Plus VI., was
made Commissary of the Apostolic Chamber by Plus VII. ; and when he was about to die,
he gave all of his personal property for the foundation of a prelatura ill famiglia , or scho-
lastlcship in the Academy for Noble Ecclesiastics, to be perpetually In the gift of the Pecci
family.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

school, Abbate Pecci made a further course of Civil and
Canon Law at the Sapienm or Roman University. When he
graduated from the Academy, its protector, the illustrious
Cardinal Pacca, who had carefully watched the progress of
the young Carpinetan, induced Pope Gregory XYI. to name
him to the “ domestic prelacy ” in 1837, although he had not
yet received Holy Orders ; and at the same time he was
appointed a Referendary of the Segnatura , and a member
of the Congregation del Buongoverno or Commission for Good
Government. In this latter capacity young Pecci was of great
assistance to Cardinal Sala (1), when, immediately after his
promotion, the cholera appeared in Rome, and His Eminence
was placed at the head of the sanitary commission for the
systemization of succor in the midst of universal panic-
On Aug. 16, the Monsignore wrote to his brother, Giovanni
Battista : “ If I also am to be included among the victims, I
bow to the decrees of the Most High, to whom I have already
offered the sacrifice of my life, in expiation of my sins ; but
nevertheless, I am perfectly calm.” When the pest had
disappeared, Mgr. Pecci prepared for his ordination. On
Dec. 17, he received the subdiaconate ; and on Dec. 24, the
diaconate, after which ceremony he wrote to his protector,
Cardinal Sala, a letter from which we take the following pas-
sage : “ After my fifteen days of strict retreat, the Feast of
Christmas approaches ; and my spiritual director allows me a
nioment of relaxation, in which I may think of what does not
pertain entirely to the affairs of the soul. ... I trust that
my joy will continue, and that it will be increased when I
receive the priesthood ; but so far I am filled with fright when
I consider the sublimity of that office, and when I reflect on
my unworthiness. Let not Your Eminence forget to pray
for me, and to ask others to do likewise. I assure you that I
wish to be a good priest .” These words edified the cardinal,
but he began to fear lest the writer might form an intention
of entering on the life of a religious, when he read : “ I wish

(l) This cardinal was the Sala who had been the faithful companion and counsellor of
Cardinal Caprara, when that diplomat was engaged In regulating the affairs of the French
Church with the First Consul ; and his admiration and affection for Pecci led him to proffer
many wise counsels to the debutant in a career which demands even more tact than,
wisdom.

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to serve God, and to show zeal for His glory, as that phrase
was understood by St. Ignatius.” His Eminence imme-
diately replied : “ You must not abandon the career on which
you have entered, and in which you can render important
services to the Church and to the Holy See.” On Dec 31,
1837, Cardinal Odeschalchi, the cardinal-vicar of Gregory
XVI., conferred the priesthood on the future Leo XIIL
Two months after his ordination, Mgr. Pecci entered upon
his first essay in the government of men. Gregory XVI.
must have had great confidence in the justice and energy of
the young prelate, when he appointed him to the govern-
ment of Benevento, one of the most difficult positions in the
Papal States. This Duchy, completely surrounded by Nea-
politan territory, had belonged to the Holy See since the
eleventh century ; and at the time of which we now write, it
had become a nest of brigands and of Neapolitan smugglers,
all more or less openly sustained by noble and apparently
respectable persons. The new delegate arrived at his post
in an almost dying condition ; a pernicious fever, contracted
as he was crossing the Pontine marshes, had fastened on
his ever delicate constitution. But after a few weeks of
struggle, he shook off the malady, and his first measures
proved to the titled and untitled disturbers of the province
that the knell of their insolent domination had sounded.
Realizing that smuggling was the chief source of all the
troubles which his predecessors had experienced, since it was
the contraband trade which furnished adventurers ever ready
to become either revolutionists or brigands, he visited Naples,
in order to concert measures with the royal govern meut for
united action against the common enemy. Ferdinand II.
agreed to the demands of the delegate ; and confident that
the frontier would now be guarded, the prelate began mili-
tary operations against brigands and contrabandists. His
energy infused spirit into the hitherto pussillanimous papal
troops ; and one by one the strongholds of the inferior order*
of criminals were forced, and their defenders captured',.
But there remained the superior order of malefactors — the
rich and noble proprietors who, in return for protection
extended, had always received a lion’s share of the profits

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made by both brigands and contrabandists. One day the
delegate received a visit from one of these rascally gentle-
men, a marquis who pretended that his feudal rights had
been violated by the papal military, and by the collectors of
the pontifical custom-house. To the violence of the noble-
man’s anger, Mgr. Pecci replied with his usual equanimity
that all papal subjects were equal before the law ; and when
he was told that the marquis w’ould proceed immediately to
Rome, there to exert a powerful influence to procure the
dismissal of one who cared so little for feudal privileges, he
calmly remarked : “ Remember, my lord, that you cannot
reach the Vatican without passing Castel San Angelo.”
This allusion to the imprisonment which the report of the
delegate would undoubtedly .secure for him, induced the
marquis to moderate his tone : but shortly afterward his
castle was carried by storm, and all of his brigand-guests
were captured. This fact will serve to indicate the spirit
with which Mgr. Pecci administered justice during his
delegation of Benevento ; and every other department of
his office was supervised with the same zeal. In 1841
^Gregory XVI. rewarded the young prelate with the difficult
.delegation of Spoleto ; but almost immediately he was
transferred to that of Perugia, then one of the most import-
ant offices, from a political point of view, in the pontifical
. dominions. During his administration of the delegation of
Perugia, Mgr. Pecci had the satisfaction of knowing that, in
: spite of the political agitations of the time, on more than one
occasion it was remarked that the prisons contained no
delinquent of any sort whatever.

During the first days of 1843, Mgr. Pecci was notified
that he had been appointed to the nunciature in Belgium,
and that he should prepare immediately for episcopal
consecration, he having been assigned to the titular arch-
diocese of Damietta. He was consecrated by Cardinal
Lambruscliini, the secretary of state, in the basilica of St.
Lawrence in Panisperna ; and on March 19, the Feast of
St. Joseph, the patron of Belgium, he embarked at Civita
Vecchia, arriving in Brussels on April 7. At the time of
his appointment, Mgr. Pecci had no more knowledge of the

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French language than that furnished by its analogies with .
its sister, the Italian tongue, and with the Latin, their com-
mon mother ; but he had begun the study of the language
which he knew to be indispensable. Before the steamer which
carried him to France had begun to plough the Mediterranean,
and when an illness forced him to pause at Nimes for a fort-
night, he profited by the delay to take some regular lessons.
Hence it was that when he arrived in the Belgian capital, he
could easily make himself understood in the principal lan-
guage of the country. The spirit which animated this young
nuncio of thirty-three years was that which was counselled by
Cardinal Lambruschini in the letter of instructions consigned
before the departure of the prelate : “ By the mercy of God
there is accorded in Belgium, in regard to the Catholic relig-
ion, and to the exercise of episcopal authority, a liberty which
is sadly wanting in several kingdoms. It should be the strict
duty of the nuncio to protect this liberty ; and in order ta
accomplish this end, the nuncio must manifest no indiscreet
zeal, and above all, he must show no spirit of party.” Tact,
not mere cunning, but a wise and Christian prudence, seems
to have been the pre-eminent characteristic of Archbishop
Pecci, even at this early period of his life. Archbishop For-
nari, the nuncio at Paris, whose long experience had made
him an excellent judge of men, was at this time a constant
correspondent with the archbishop of Damietta ; and in
some of his letters there are indications that on one occasion
he had availed himself of his greater experience and of his
recognized affection for Pecci to disapprove of certain
procedures on the part of his friend. The reply of Mgr,
Fornari to the explanation furnished by Mgr. Pecci, an
explanation which was as moderate as it was sincere, shows
how he had been impressed by the discretion of his younger
colleague : “ Allow me, my lord, to assure you with all
frankness, and without any offence to your modesty, that
your letter is a veritable lesson to me. During several years-
I have been aware of your virtue, and I have ever admired
it ; but this instance has really edified me. You might, for
many good reasons, have told me to attend to my own
affairs, and not to meddle with those of others ; but instead

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of so doing, you thank me for my remarks, and with truly
Christian humility, you say that my letter has gratified you.
To tell the truth, I had already repented of my observations ;
I had realized my imprudence ; and nevertheless you thank
me. I am grateful to you for the manner in which you
have regarded my indiscretion ; and it proves that your
nunciature will be entirely successful, since God exalts those
who humble themselves. Pardon me, therefore, my lord,
and bless the God who has given you so much virtue. And
may God grant that I be not content with admiring that
virtue ! May I receive the strength to imitate it ! ” The
scope of our work precludes any details of the participation
of Mgr. Pecci in the politico-religious affairs of Belgium
•during his nunciature ; we merely note that when, in 1845,
the Belgian court was informed that Pope Gregory XVI.
had determined to confer the bishopric of Perugia on the
archbishop of Damietta, all Belgium grieved for his depart-
ure. Not satisfied with investing the prelate with the Grand
Cordon of his Order, King Leopold L handed to him a
letter to the Pontiff, which is very interesting as a judg-
ment on its subject, emitted by the deepest politician among
:all the rulers of his day : “ I desire to recommend Archbishop
Pecci to the benevolent protection of Tour Holiness.
For every reason he merits that consideration. Very rarely
have I beheld so sincere a devotion to duty, intentions so
pure, and actions so straightforward. His residence in this
country has been most beneficial, because of the eminent
services it has enabled him to perform for Your Holiness.
I beg of Your Holiness that he may be asked to render an
exact account of the impressions which the ecclesiastical
affairs of Belgium have produced in his mind ; for he judges
wisely in all matters. Your Holiness may accord to him
your entire confidence.” Certainly, this testimony of
Leopold I., a profound judge of men, and one who, although
a Protestant, knew the Belgian Church thoroughly, is a
refutation of the insinuations made, in after years, by that
eminent Freemason, Frere-Orban.

Having taken leave of the Belgian court, Archbishop Pecci
deemed it wise, before taking possession of his see, to widen

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his experience of men and things by a short visit to England.
He spent a month in London, and was received in audience
by the young Queen Victoria. He then passed some weeks
in Paris, and conversed with Louis Philippe ; then he set
out for Rome, where he was received most kindly by the
lately-enthroned Pius IX. When the new Pontiff had read
the letter of the Belgian monarch, he sent the following
answer : “ Mgr. Pecci, recently nuncio to Your Majesty, has
handed to us the letter which Your Majesty addressed to
our predecessor of dear and regretted memory. This beauti-
ful testimony which Your Majesty proffers in favor of Mgr.
Pecci, now bishop of Perugia, is very honorable to that
prelate ; and he shall certainly experience the consequences'
of your royal good offices, just as though he had gone
through the regular course of nunciatures. On July 26,
1846, Archbishop Pecci took solemn possession of the see
which he was to occupy until within a few months of the
death of Pius IX., and in which he had an appropriate
share of all the tribulations,4 as well as of all the joys,
which we have described as attendant on the pontificate of
the Pope of the Immaculate Conception. These thirty-two
years of episcopate, occupying all of the mature manhood,
and part of the old age of the future Pontiff, were a long
and thorough preparation for the Supreme Pastorate of
the entire Church of Christ ; nor was that preparation too
long for the formation of such a Pope as the world was to
venerate in Leo XIII. It would be a gracious task to
recapitulate all the evidences of his pastoral solicitude which
Archbishop Pecci manifested during this time ; but we must
refer the student to the many excellent biographies of our
Pontiff, notably to the one written by Mgr. T’Serelaes, for
proofs that while exercising his apostolate in the beautiful
city of Umbria, he constantly showed that he was animated
by a heroic charity toward God and man. On Dec. 19, 1853,
Mgr. Pecci was enrolled in the Sacred College ; and two
years afterward Mgr. de Merode, writing to his father in
Belgium, said : “ I have just been in Perugia, to visit Cardinal
Pecci and the two institutions managed by the Brothers (of
Charity) of Malines, and the Sisters (of Notre-Dame) of

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Namur, whom he has called to his diocese for that purpose.
In spite of his apparent coldness (1), this good cardinal is
a man of immense zeal. He has placed his seminary on
the very best footing ; and he is restoring his cathedral.
He is re-animating all the ancient institutions, with which
this city is filled.” In 1849, when the hordes of Garibaldi
became masters of Perugia after their repulse at Rome by
the French, the Austrians under the Prince of Lichtenstein
advanced to occupy the city. Of course the fearful excesses
of the modern sam-culottes were to be stopped, but the arch-
bishop dreaded the effects of a foreign intervention on his
people ; therefore he visited the Austrian camp, and prevail-
ing on the commander to renounce his project, the pontifical
authority was soon restored without effusion of blood. In
1860, when Perugia became the scene of the comedy of the
“ voluntary ” annexation of Umbria to the dominions of the
Re Gdlantuomo , a comedy which was played under the
managership of the Marquis Pepoli of Bologna, the prudence
of Cardinal Pecci, without any sacrifice, on his part, of the
rights of truth, conciliated the respect of the agents of the
usurping power. When the Piedmontese Minister, Min-
ghetti, sent a circular, on Oct. 26, 1861, to all the bishops of
the Papal States, calling on them to acknowledge the govern-
ment of Victor Emmanuel, it was Cardinal Pecci who
composed the address of fidelity to Pius IX., which was
signed by all the bishops of Umbria. Great were the suffer-
ings of the chief prelate of that Umbria which was so pre-
eminently Catholic, as he saw the land afflicted by “ the
blessings of modern civilization ” ; as he witnessed the license
of the press, the systematic corruption of youth by govern-
mental agencies, the laicization of religious institutions, the
expulsion of religious orders, the ruin of Christian families
under the pretext of civil marriage, the protection given by
the government to suspended priests, the interference of the
government in the collation of benefices, and the enforced

(1) This qualification of “ apparent coldness,” applied to the cardinal by Mgr. de Merode,
will be understood by all who knew the nature of the pontifical Pro- Minister of War. He
was a man of intensely ardent temperament, and the prudence and sedateness of His
Eminence mirht well have seemed ” coldness ” to him. See Frederick Francis fie
Merode . by Mgr. Besson , p. 121.

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enrollment of ecclesiastics in the military service. Writing
to his family on December 1, 1860, His Eminence said :
“ We are now in the midst of the fire ; and God knows
when we shall escape. It would be inexact to say that my
health has not been affected by the vicissitudes through which
we are passing ; but the grace of God has been with me,
and in all critical moments I have received strength and
courage.” On Sept. 21, 1877, Pius IX. appointed Cardinal
Pecci Camerlingo of Holy Homan Church, an office which
entailed the resignation of his diocese, and his residence in
the Eternal City (1). To the great grief of himself and of
the Perugians, the archbishop departed for Rome, where,
in less than five months, he was to be acclaimed as Vicar of
Christ on earth.

When Leo XILL ascended the papal throne, it became evi-
dent immediately that his intellectual and moral personality
already dominated the most virulent adversaries of the Holy
See. Rattazzi, that statesman whom Thiers termed the
“ most clearsighted ” in the world, wrote to the Gazzetta d
Italia ; “ This Pecci is a man of undoubted calibre ; one who

possesses great force of will, and who can be very severe in
the exercise of his prerogatives ; and nevertheless he has the
most agreeable manners in the world. While he was at
Benevento, he showed great capabilities, and he proved that
he was of decisive and inflexible character. On many occa-
sions I spoke concerning him with King Leopold I., a prince
whose correctness of perception surpasses that of any sover-
eign in Europe, and who had studied and appreciated Pecci
during his nunciature in Belgium. We talked about Pecci’s
great prudence, and about his dignity and incorruptibility,
those qualities which inspire in our governmental function-

(1) The word Camerlingo , according to Ducange, was once used in reference to not
only papal, but also imperial treasurers. Now, however, just as during the last few cen-
turies, the cardlnal-camerUrif/o is the president of the Apostolic Chamber, and he exer-
cises the temporal authority during the interval between the death of one Pope and
the election of another. During that period, which is termed the interptmtificium , the
camerlingo is the first personage in the Roman Court, since all the properties of the Holy
8ee are then administered by the Apostolic Chamber. Then the camerlingo coins money
bearing his name and arms ; and when the Pontiff was king defaeto as well as de jure ,
the camerlingo used to appear in the streets of the capital, during the interpontijlcium*
attended by the Swiss guards. During the first eight days of the interpontijleium , the*
camerlingo can issue edicts as though he were the Pope-King.

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aries an insurmountable fear of his person. His devotion to
the Holy See is illimitable ; his inflexibility, very nearly
.obstinacy, leaves no room for even a suspicion of his ever
harboring a weakness. There is no sense in denying that
Pecci is one of those priests who must be esteemed and
admired — a man of extraordinary political farsightedness, and
a man whose knowledge is still greater.” In the pamphlet
entitled Pius IX. and the Next Pope , published in 1877 by
Buggiero Bonghi, who had been Minister of Public Instruc-
tion in the Minghetti cabinet, these words of appreciation had
been uttered : “ Cardinal Pecci is undoubtedly one of the
most striking characters in the Sacred College ; probably no
one of his colleagues has so much energy, and at the same time,
•so much moderation. He has always been brilliant in bis
studies, he has performed his duties well, and he is more
than an ordinarily good bishop. The ideal cardinal is a sub-
lime personage ; but it may be said of Pecci that he has
made a reality of the conception.” L'Italiey which, although
printed in French, was then at least the semi-official organ
of Italian diplomacy, thus spoke, just after the election of
our Pontiff : “ It must be admitted that to-day the tiara is

very heavy, and that the mission of the new Pope is not an
easy one. But in the judgment of all men, Leo XIII. is a
man of firm will, of enlightened piety, and esteemed both for
his character and for his virtues.” All of these authorities
pretended to agree with the innocents who thought, jijst as
others had thought in the case of Pius IX. during the early
days of his pontificate, that the new Pope would reconcile in-
compatibilities, that he would proclaim his hearty acceptation
of “ accomplished facts ”; that there would be an alliance
between Christ and Belial. The sectarian leaders recognized
the absurdity of such anticipations ; but it suited their pur-
pose to cultivate them among the less virile of the Catholics,
and they even hoped that such a suspicion would deprive
Leo Xm. of the sympathies of the more sturdy of his chil-
dren. But in his first Consistorial Allocution, delivered on
Tdarcli 28, 1878, the Pontiff lauded the policy of his pre-
decessor ; and he proclaimed that the Head of the Church
^was no longer free, he having been forcibly deprived of the

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-temporal power which#is necessary for the free exercise of
his Apostolic ministry. It was in his first Encyclical, how-
ever, that Leo XIII. declared categorically that any reconcili-
ation between Rome and the Revolution is impossible. The
Encyclical Inscrutabili appeared on Easter Sunday, 1878 ; and
while in it he touched on nearly all the points which formed
the subjects of his posterior Encyclicals, he laid special
stress on the necessity of the temporal power, declaring that
he would never cease to insist on a restoration of the Holy
See to that condition in which Divine Wisdom had placed
it, and renewing all the condemnations pronounced by Pius IX-
against the violators of the rights of the Roman Church.
Great was the disappointment of the Unitarians when they read
this Encyclical. Even the moderate Nazione said : “ The
new Pope does not curse or even menace any one ; and in
this fact lies the sole difference that subsists between him
and Pio Nono. As for the condemnation of all the conquests
•of modern intelligence, Leo XIII. is as absolute, inexorable,
almost cruel, as was his predecessor. In this long document,
you will not find one word, one idea, which will imply that
the Church can ever become reconciled with modern civil-
ization.” TIiq radical Riforma found the papal pronounce-
ment “ sweet in form, but absolute and uncompromising in
substance.”

Leo XIII., like his predecessor, had insisted, from the
beginning of his pontificate, tbatthe position of the Pope in
Rome was “ intolerable ” ; and on July 13, 1881, the world
was furnished with an object-lesson which confirmed the
assertion. With the consent of the municipal authorities of
Rome, it had been decided that in the dead of night the mor-
tal remains of Pope Pius IX., then resting temporarily in St.
Peter’s, should be transferred to the place designated for his
ultimate sepulture by the late Pontiff himself — the Basilica
•of St. Lawrence, outside the walls. The government of the
Quirinal, as though it wished to accentuate the declaration
of Leo XIII. concerning the “ intolerability ” of the papal
position in Rome, had refused to permit any solemn cere-
monies during the transfer. By some means the intention
of the Vatican authorities became public property ; and tliere-

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fore when midnight arrived, and the ihodest procession of a>
hearse and three carriages set forth from the Basilica of the
Apostles, over a hundred thousand faithful Homans (so the
radical journals admitted) were ready to accompany the
corpse of their revered Pio Nono to its last resting-place.
Along the route of the procession, hundreds of houses were
suddenly illuminated ; window's were thrown open, and flow-
ers were thrown on the hearse. This posthumous triumph
of the grandest victim of the Revolution, of the Pope of the
Immaculate Conception, of one of the chiefs of the earthly
foes of Satan, could not but enrage the powers then dominant ‘
in the City of the Popes. The men who were just then pre-
paring to apotheosize Satan, the sectarians w ho were pro-
claiming that the Mazzinian motto God and the People should
be changed to God is the People (1), had organized a band of
madmen for a demonstration of hell’s impotent rage against
an honor paid to the Pontiff who had hailed as Immaculate
the Blessed Woman who had crushed the head of the Serpent
under her heel. From various quarters numbers of ruflBans
attacked the procession, vomiting insults too gross for repeti-
tion by us, and insisting on the throwing of the body of Pius
IX. into the nearest sewer, or at least into the4 Tiber. The
police prevented the actuation of this illustration of the defer-
ence of the Unitarians for the Papacy ; but they offered no
interference with the insults which were hurled on the proces-
sionists until the Church of St. Lawrence was reached, nor

(1) To-day the blasphemies of Freemasonry in Italy are not directed against the temporal
power of the Pope alone, nor even against the Catholic Church alone ; the sectarians now
openly, as they always did secretly, direct their blasphemies against God. There was much
to be admired in Mazzini (See our Vol. v., ch. 14), virulent enemy of the Pope-King
though he was ; and he would scarcely recognize his sentimeuts in the ebullitions of his
heir, Alberto Mario, the editor of La Lcga della Democrcutia , as this enterprising human-
itarian places an accent over the e in the famous motto, thereby making It hail the people
as God. Before Mario had made this venture, the Masonic Proletario bad emitted, in
1879, the declaration that “ God is the greatest enemy of the people, since He curses
labor.” After the shock occasioned by this blasphemy, the dupes of Freemasonry must
have been prepared for the frenzied acclamations of the Brothers of the Three Points, as
they endorsed, throughout the month of February, 1882, the infamous praise of Satan
which Carducci vomited for their delectation in the Alfleri Theatre of Turin : “ Look on
him, ye peoples, as be passes ; behold Satan the Great ! He moves onward on his chariot
of Are, blessing as be goes. Hail, Satan ! Satan, the Rebel, hail ! May our sacred Incense
and our prayers ascend to thee ! Thou hast conquered the Jehovah of the priests! ” We
would here observe, however, that justice to Carducci requires us to remember that a
grander mind than his bad already tried to rehabilitate the fell monarch of hell ; In the
Journal dcs Debats% April 25, 1851, Renan bad essayed the task.

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did they prevent the wounding of many of these by contin-
ual volleys of stones and other missies. In the Allocution
which our Pontiff delivered on August 4, he cried : “ Let the
Catholic world consider the measure of security which we
now enjoy in the Eternal City ! Certainly it is evident that
our residence in the Vatican becomes more hazardous every
day.” The Pontiff insisted, however, that the immense
majority of the Romans, not the foreigners who had followed
the Sardinian court into the capital of the Popes, had been
pained by this .outrage equally with himself ; he had one
great consolation in “ the love and the religion of the Roman
people, who, solicited and even entrapped in every way, never-
theless persevered in obedience to the Church, and in a
courageous fidelity to the Pontiff, omitting no occasion of
testifying to the virtues which were rooted in their hearts.”
The true Roman people, and indeed the majority of the
Italians, hastened to assure the Pontiff of the horror with
which the recent outrage had filled their souls ; a protest,
bearing several millions of signatures, arrived at the Vatican,
and on October 16, over 20,000 pilgrims, from every part of
Italy, saluted Leo XIII. in his palace-prison as “ the first of
Italians.” “Let not one of you,” the Pope replied to their
address, “ yield to the force of events, habituating yourselves
by a culpable indifference to a state of things which neither
toe ourselves nor our successors shall ever accept .” It was
while the impressions produced by the scandal of July 13,

1881, were still fresh in his mind, that Leo XIII. composed
the Encyclical Etsi nos , which he published on February 15,

1882. After a description of the efforts to unchristianize
Italy, put forth by the sectarians by means of the suppres-
sion of religious orders, by the confiscation of ecclesiastical
property, and by the secularization of matrimony and of
instruction, the Pontiff reminded the Italians that it was to
the Popes that they owed the fact that they had not become
the prey of barbarians and of Mohammedans ; that it was to
the Popes that they principally owed their pre-eminent posi-
tion in the world of art ; and that it was to the Popes that they
owed that peace which comes from a unity of faith. This
civilizing and pacifying power the Church and the Roman

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Pontiffs have never lost, and precisely because that power is
a necessary effect of the Catholic doctrines. On the con-
trary, they who pose as enthusiastic defenders of Italy,*
even while they inundate her with perverse teachings, are
destroyers of their country. History, and very recent h istory,
shows the excesses to which these wicked doctrines lead.
If Italy has not yet experienced these excesses so much as
some other countries, it is because the true faith has so pro-
foundly penetrated the masses of the people ; but woe to Italy >
if she allows herself to be seduced ! Then, more ungrateful
than other peoples, she will suffer more terrible punishments.
The Pope now proceeds to indicate the remedies for the
desolation which he has depicted ; and in the first place he
calls on the Italians to shake off that lethargy, in which,,
unaccustomed to the struggles of modern times, they are
habitually wrapped. They must found Catholic societies for
the young, for the working classes, and for the poor. They
must sustain the Catholic press, and combat all anti-Catholic
journals. All good writers, of whom there is an abundance
in Italy, should act in accordance with a pre-determined
plan ; they should use language both calm and easily under-
stood ; and all wealthy Catholics should encourage these
writers. Finally, the Pontiff calls on the Italians to con-
tribute largely to the support of the ecclesiastical seminaries,
now so prostrate under the blows of the robbers ; and he
asks them to imitate the Catholics of France, who acted so
nobly when they wTere victims of similar injustice.

In the years 1881 and 1882, there happened two incidents
which showed most eloquently the value of the* assurances
given to the world by the government of the Quirinal, to
the effect that the spiritual authority of the Pope, and the
extra-territoriality of the Vatican, were secure under its
protection. On Jan. 280 1881, the Court of Cassation con-
firmed a decision of the Roman tribunals, according to which
the government could close, destroy, or devote to other pur-
poses, any church in its dominions ; the cardinal-vicar of
His Holiness or any diocesan prelate might protest, but the
court decided that though the Italian government recognized
the independence of the spiritual power, the State couldt

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dispose of everything connected with divine worship at its
pleasure. Truly an audacious proceeding; but it was no
more barefaced in its audacity than the expulsion of thou-
sands of nuns from their convents, and the confiscation of
the dowries which, on the occasion of their profession, their
families had given for their sustenance. A proof of the
insincerity of the promise that the Vatican and its precincts
should enjoy the privilege of extra-territoriality, an assurance
that was given immediately after the crime of Sept., 1870,.
was furnished in 1882, when an engineer named Martinucci,
having been dismissed from the service of His Holiness,
applied to the civil tribunals of Rome for an order compell-
ing the Pontiff to pay some alleged arrears of wages. The
courts perforce denied the application ; but they asserted
their competence to judge in that and similar cases, thus-
openly nullifying the Law of Guarantees, which acknowledged
the “ sovereign rights ” of the Pope, and denied to the royal
government any right to exert power within the limits of the
Vatican. Certainly Pius IX. was not unreasonable, when,
on the occasion of the tender of the Guarantees for his
acceptance, he replied : “ Victor Emmanuel guarantees all
this ; but who guarantees Victor Emmanuel? *'

We have alluded to the confiscation of ecclesiastical and
religious property by the Italian Unitarian government.
That measure is so necessarily a concomitant of any
Masonic advent to power in a Catholic country, and its raison
(T etre and its consequences are so well understood by the
Catholic reader, that we need say no more, while treating of
the pontificate of Leo XIII., than that this confiscation was
nearly universal. A few religious institutions were allowed
to preserve a semblance of ownership over their property ;
but in practice that preservation was derisory. All those
favored institutions were required to convert their property
into Italian governmental bonds ; in other words, the govern-
ment put into its coffers so much good money as its agents
deemed necessary to give it, after a replenishment of their
own pocket-books ; and the victims received the alleged
value of their property in pieces of paper which were of very
problematical value at their best, and might be worth nothing;

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at any time. Among the institutions which were affected by
this financial chicanery, was the Congregation of the Propa-
ganda, so pre-eminently Catholic and international, and
which is truly the right arm of the Holy See in all missionary
countries. No other light than that which emanates from the
Dark Lantern could have discerned in the Propaganda an
Italian institution, one supposed to be properly subject to
Italian quasi-confiscatory proceedings ; three-fourths of its
revenues were derived from France, and Italy furnished but a
small portion of the balance. An appeal was made to the
tribunals, while Leo XIII. protested, through his nuncios, to
all the courts with which the Holy See preserved official rela-
tions ; but the Court of Cassation, on June 29, 1884, decided
in favor of the government. Of course the Pontiff had
known that the appeal of the Propaganda would be useless ;
hence in order to protect the interests of the missions in the
future, he had ordered, on March 15, that no more funds
for the propagation of the faith should be sent to Rome, but
that said funds should be thereafter managed by eleven
procurators in Europe, three in Asia, one in Africa, seven in
North and South America, and one in Oceanica.

In 1881 the directing spirits of Italian Masonry conceived
the project of a Universal Masonic Congress, to be held in
the Eternal City in the following year. The design was
announced in Nov., 1881, by Le Monde Ma^onnique, and the
Rivista Ma88onica thus explained the reason of the Congress :
“ The Revolution went to Rome, in order to fight the Pope,
face to face ; in order to bring together, under the dome of
St. Peter’s, the champions of human reason ; in order to
give gigantic proportions to. Freemasonry, by assembling
its members in the very heart of the capital of the world.
There Freemasonry will pitilessly attack all religions which
profess a belief in a God and in the immortality of the
soul.” The frankly logical declarations of this and similar
announcements, an exhibition of a daring logic which is
peculiar to the Masons of the Latin race, terrified the less
logical minds of the would-be “ conservative ” Masons of
England and Germany ; those of England refused to com-
mit themselves to an impiety which was too glaring, and

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those of Germany yielded to the pressure of Bismarck, who
sympathized with the fear of the Italian cabinet that the Pope
might be forced to abandon Rome — a proceeding which the
men of the Quirinal have always dreaded, not only because
of the pecuniary loss which it would entail upon Italy, but
because of the probability that it would ultimately result in
a forcible restoration of the temporal power (1). The latest
ambition of the sectarians was the cause of several impor-
tant utterances on the part of Leo XIII. which will interest
the student. On Feb. 15, 1882, in the Encyclical Etsi nos ,
the Pontiff said .: “ Rome, the most august of Christian cities,
is opened to all the enemies of the Church ; profane innova-
tions of every kind stain her soil ; here and there temples
and schools are dedicated to heresy. It would even seem
that during the current year Rome is to be the scene of a
solemn gathering of the leaders and representatives of that
sect which is the most virulent of all in its hostility to
Catholicism. There is no mystery as to the reasons which
have militated for the choice of Rome as the scene of this
demonstration. The sectarians wish, by means of this out-
rageous provocation, to satiate their hatred for the Catholic
Church ; they intend to bring their incendiary torches
nearer to tbs Roman Pontificate, by an attack on its place
of residence. . . . More prudent than the children of light,
these sectarians have already dared much ; although infer-
ior in number, they are powerful, because of their cunning
and wealth, and they have succeeded in kindling among us
a conflagration of miseries. Therefore let all the lovers of
the Catholic name understand that the time has come for
an abandonment of lethargy ; let them realize that men are
never more easily oppressed than at the time when they
sleep in cowardly indolence.” And on Oct. 17, 1882, in his
address to the Italian pilgrims, His Holiness said : “ The
sects, ever attentive in their warfare on the Church of J esus

(1) In September, 1870, through the medium of Diamilla-Muller, Victor Emmanuel con-
ducted a series of intrigues, the objedt of which was to prevent Pius IX. from retiring to
a foreign country. These negotiations are detailed in the curious work entitled The
Secret Policy of the Italian Government , ch. 12. Turin, 1880. As for the object of
the more earnest and more logical Masons in 188I-’83. the expulsion of the Pontiff from
Rome, it was plainly proclaimed by Alberto Mario, in bis Leya delta Democrazia,
Oct., 1881.

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Christ, and ever ready, if they could succeed, to banish
Catholicism from the face of the earth, are now growing in
number, power, and audacity. Their aims are directed
especially against Italy, where the Catholic faith is so
deeply rooted, and whence, from the seat of the Supreme
Pastor, the Catholic world receives the spirit of Jesus Christ
and the benefits of the Redemption. Therefore, in all the
Congresses which these sects have held this year in many
cities of Europe, their eyes have been directed on Catholic
Italy, and they have determined to hold a Universal Con-
gress in the centre of Catholicism, and to deliver a blow on
the foundation-stone of the Christian difice, as a haughty
defiance of the Church herself. . . . Thus it is that the
specious promises, made from the beginning (of the revolu-
tion) for the purpose of deceiving the simple, that the
Catholic religion would be preserved intact in Italy, that the
person of the Roman Pontiff would be respected, and that
the exercise of the spiritual power of the Papacy would be
secured — all these promises have been belied by events, and
are now confronted by open hostility against the Church ahd
her head. . . . Remember, my children, that there is in Italy
and in Rome a party which threatens to invade our Apostolic
palace, and to reduce us to a captivity more unendurable than
exile.” The Universal Congress of Freemasonry was not held
in Rome ; but when Francesco Crispi attained to power, the
sectarians displayed an increase of energy. On Oct. 10, 1890,
the Grand-Master of the United Orients of Italian Masonry,
Adriano Lemmi, sent the following instruction to all the
Lodges in his jurisdiction : “ The edifice which the brethren
are now erecting will not be regarded as complete, until
Italy makes a present to humanity, in the shape of the rub-
bish which will be left by the destruction of the great enemy.
The enterprise advances rapidly. . . . The fidelity of the
Brother of the Thirty-third Degree (Crispi), wlio is at the head
of the political power, is a guarantee that the Vatican will
fall, under the blows of our vivifying mallet (sic). But it is
necessary that, at the coming elections, at least 400 of our
brethren be chosen as deputies for the Legislative Cham-
ber. . . . Our efforts will be strenuously combatted by the

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leader of the priests and by his vile slaves. . . . The Grand
Orient invokes the Genius of Humanity, to the end that the
brethren put forth all their energies in order to separate
the stones of the Vatican, and to then use them in the erection
of the temple of an emancipated nation.’* And in the
discourse which he pronounced in Bologna, during his
electoral tour of 1892, the same Grand-Master explicitly
avowed the Masonic guilt of all the charges which Leo XI1L
made against the sect : “ In order to form itself, the Italian
State must combat all religions ; it must oppose the Earthly
City to the City of God . When that State addresses the
people, its word can be no other than a human word — the
word of science and of right. In that State, the type of a
lay State will be incarnated in the school, in the family, and in
every manifestation of public life. There must be no more
thought of a sacramental basis for the family ; there is hut
one sacrament — love . Once that we admit civil marriage, we
necessarily open the door to divorce. And why should toe
maintain a Ministry of Worship ? If any believe in a future
life , let such persons provide such a Ministry for themselves !
Let such persons buy their Indulgences, when they think
that they need them ! The State ought not be, and cannot
be their go-between. But I hear some say that all this
implies a thorough revolution in every order of the State. It
does imply that revolution ; and such is the way in which
we must march.” After such manifestations of candor, it
would be unjust to accuse Masonry of hypocrisy ; and it
would be equally unjust to Leo XIII. and his last ten pre-
decessors (from Clement XII., who first condemned the sect,
down to Pius IX.), to charge them with misrepresentation of
the aims of the votaries of the Dark Lantern. It had been
believed by many innocents, even in Italy, as well as in these
United States, that in attacking Pius IX. and Leo XHI., the*
sectarians warred only on the sacerdotal monarchs of the*
Boman States ; but in his discourse at Genoa, Lemmi pro-
claimed exultantly that the hatred of his order was cherished
in regard to the teaching-priest , as well as for the prwst-kivg :
“ Yes, my dear brothers ; we must fight not only against that
pretender in the Vatican who plots against the unity of our

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country, but — and let us at last proclaim it before tlie
world ! — against that Pontiff who poses as the champion of
the disinherited classes in order to more easily enslave them
under the yoke of fanaticism. . . . Against that Pontiff we
must wage unrelenting war. Nor does our order require
merely aspirations from you ; it wants acts, now that it finds
in front of itself an enemy who does not hide himself ; an
enemy who is never idle ; an enemy who brazenly descends
into the arena of civic struggle.” At Milan, the Grand-
Master thus perorated : “ Although the Papacy is now a
mere phantom wandering among some ruins, it emits some
eclat from the Vatican. It defies the world with its Cross,
its Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, its Syllabus; and a
numerous multitude prostrates itself and adores. ... We
declare war against this clerical conspiracy ; and it must be a
war without mercy. All those who invoke the past are
partisans of clericalism and foes of Freemasonry ” (1). To
these and many similar ebullitions of the Masonico-Liberal
guides of the destinies of “ New Italy,” Leo XIII. responded
in a letter to the Italians, dated Dec. 8, 1892 : “ In a matter
of such importance (resistance against the wiles of Masonry),
a matter in which seduction is now so easy, the Christian
must beware of the first step in the road of danger ; he must
avoid the slightest danger, and eschew every occasion of fall ;
he must, in fine, follow the evangelical counsels, preserving
in his heart the simplicity of the dove and the wisdom of
the serpent. Let the fathers and mothers of families beware
•of admitting into the intimacy of their firesides persons
whose religious sentiments are not above suspicion. Let
-them inquire whether under the guise of a friend, a teacher,
or a physician, there be not hidden an emissary of the sect.
Alas! into how many families the wolf has penetrated,
while he wore the semblance of a lamb! ” To these counsels
-of the Father of the Faithful, the Grand-Master replied in an
instruction from Naples : “ The Law of Papal Guarantees is a
permanent menace1 for the country; Freemasonry has con-
tinually clamored for its abolition. A law which establishes
privileges, and which secures a monstrous impunity to

/l) Unitd Cattnlica , Aa«. 6, 1802.

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parricide, is essentially tyrannical. And parricides are
never wanting. From the Vatican a vast conspiracy spreads
itself throughout Europe ; unions of every kind are multiplied,
and thousands of fanatics acclaim the Pope-King. . . . The
Quirinal and the Vatican are now face to face ; now the long
conflict between Pontiff and Prince is to be settled defin-
itively ; we will not leave the settlement to posterity. The
rights of laymen are about to rise superior to ecclesiastical
usurpations.”

We should now proceed to a consideration of the relations
between Pope Leo XIII. and the various peoples of Chris-
tendom ; but some of those relations were of importance suffi-
cient to demand special chapters for their treatment. Spain
furnishes the sole material for our present consideration.
Unlike his immediate predecessors, Leo XIII. had very little
trouble with the Spanish government. With the Spanish
bishops, priests, and people, since their history has been
nearly always synonymous with devotion to the Holy See,
he could have expected no difficulty. However, there
occurred two incidents in Spain, during this pontificate,
which are interesting ; one because it illustrates an important
poiut of ecclesiastical jurisprudence, and the other, because,
although not very extraordinary in itself, it helped to illus-
trate the retreat of Bismarck on Canossa. The first incident
arose from a misconception, on the part of an eminent Span-
ish journalist, of the prerogatives of a Papal nuncio in face
of the bishops of a country, to the government of which he
is accredited. Bamon Nocedal, editor of El Siglo Futuro , an
excellent Catholic journal, was an ardent Catholic himself,
but possessed of a zeal which often impelled him to indiscre-
tions. Like all good Spaniards, he detested the Masonic
regime, under which, for the punishment due to their sins,
God has permitted the Iberian peninsulars to languish during
the greater part of the last hundred years ; therefore, when
he read that Mgr. Bampolla del Tindaro, the nuncio at
Madrid, had declared publicly that his relations with the-
Spanish cabinet were most cordial, the fiery Carlist could not.
contain his indignation. He did not remember that a nuncio,
like all other ambassadors, could very properly say, when

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speaking diplomatically, that things personally and really
unpleasant were officially enjoyable. The Siglo Fuiuro told
its readers tlAt the relations between the Spanish Masonic
government were very uncordial, and that they could be of
no other nature. This manifestation of Carlistic and Catholic
zeal might have been regarded as mere imprudence ; but
Nocedal contended that the authority of the bishops was
superior to that of the nuncio in things which bear on the
relations between Church and State, and that a nunciature is
merely a diplomatic mission which is often a mere network
of human considerations, and that the bishops were not
bound to defer to the words of the Apostolic envoy. The
consequence of this ebullition was a communication from
Cardinal Jacobini, dated April 13, 1886, in which Mgr.
Rampolla was directed to make it known that the theories
of the Siglo Futuro were dangerous, as being redolent of that
pest of Catholic Germany, Febronianism. As the cardinal-
secretary wrote, the Pope is the supreme pastor of all bishops,
as well as of the clergy and of the laity ; therefore he has
the right to interfere in diocesan affairs, when lie deems it
necessary to so interfere. The nuncios are delegates of the
Holy See, in the form and measure assigned by the Pontiff
to their respective missions ; therefore it is incorrect to say
that their mission is purely diplomatical. A nuncio is not
subject to the bishops of the country to which he is delegated ;
and consequently, added the cardinal, “ the bishops have no
right to determine his prerogatives, and still less can they
emit a judgment as to the legality of his acts. On the
contrary, those acts must be respected by both the bishops
and their subjects,” who always have, however, the right of
appeal to the Holy See in case of abuse. And the cardinal
was careful to note that “ when certain acts of a nuncio are
known to the Holy See, and they are not condemned, they
may reasonably be regarded as emanating from the Holy
See itself.” The relations between the Church and the
State interest every Catholic in the world, and therefore they
pertain to the competence of the Head of the Church, and
consequently to the competence of his delegates, the nuncios ;
it is incqrrect, therefore, concludes Jacobini, to say that in

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this matter the authority of the bishops is superior to that
of the nuncios. “ The exact contrary is true.” When this
decision was received by Nocedal, he immediately and
gracefully submitted ; and Mgr. Rampolla publicly con-
gratulated him, saying that “ a loyal manifestation of rever-
ence for the Holy See, far from humiliating its author, exalts
him.” The second incident in the Spanish affairs of this
pontificate, to which we would call the attention of the student,
is that of the “ arbitration,” or as it really was, the mediation
exercised by Leo XIII. in the dispute between Spain and
Germany concerning the Caroline Islands. The Germans,
inflated by the result of their recent war with France, had
taken possession of the Caroline Islands, that archipelago of
the Pacific which, situated to the south-east of the Philip-
pines, had been first visited in 1526 by the Portuguese,
Diego da Roclia, and later by the Spaniards, Villalobos,
Legaspi, and Querosa, fiually receiving from the Spaniard,
Lazeano, its present name in honor of the king of Spain,
Charles II. (1661-1700). For more than a century, the Span-
ish government had cared so little about the Carolines, that it
had ceased to appoint a governor , but no European power
had ever challenged the Spanish right of sovereignty, based as
it was upon the right of first occupancy by the Portuguese, and
the posterior cession of the Portuguese right to the Spaniards,
in accordance with the line of demarcation already drawn by
Pope Alexander VI. in 1493, a decision which both parties
regarded as binding in honor and in conscience. Rut the pos-
sibility of a Panama canal finally awakened the government
of Alfonso XII. to the prospective commercial and stratagetic
importance of the Carolines ; and in Feb., 1885, the Spanish
man-of-war “ Velasco ” anchored in the harbor of Yap in order
to preparearesidence for a Spanish representative. However,
the covetous eye of the German chancellor had marked the
archipelago as a future basis of political and commercial
enterprise ; and a few months after the arrival of the “ Vel-
asco,” a German gunboat steamed into the Spanish port, and
in brazen defiance of the Law of Nations, the rule of the
Teutons was proclaimed. The insult fired the indignation ol
all the inhabitants of Spain — all factional differences being

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forgotten in a universal * determination to vindicate the
national honor. The reason for the German piracy is
evident ; why its author should have suddenly sought for a
means of avoiding its consequences, and even of striking the
flag so impudently flaunted, was and is a mystery even to
the wiseacres of the European and American press. But
suddenly the world was informed that the cabinet of Berlin
had determined to submit its “ difference with that of
Madrid” to the arbitrament of the Pontiff. That at the
culmination of the nineteenth century — that sacrosanct child
of the Revolution, the guiding spirit of the chief Protestant
power in the world should endeavor to appease interna-
tional grievances by an appeal to the wisdom and justice of
the Pope of Rome, was an event calculated to arouse the
Brethren of the Three Points to preternatural efforts of
protestation. But the fact was patent ; all that the Lodges
could effect by way of a minimization was the circulation of a
rumor that the choice of Leo XIII. as arbitrator was due to a
misunderstanding which was caused by a falsified despatch.
And while the adepts were raging to no purpose, our Pontiff
received, on Oct. 2, 1885, a letter from the German emperor,
requesting him to arbitrate in the Hispano-German question.
Leo XIII. replied that he would not undertake, in the pres-
ent circumstances of Christendom, to “ arbitrate ” between the
the two powers ; but that he would “ mediate.” His Holiness
realized that the part of an arbitrator was to pronounce a
judgment which would have the force of law on the dis-
putants ; whereas the office of a mediator was to propose an
amicable arrangement between the parties. The two cabinets
agreed with the pontifical suggestion ; and the Pontiff, after
an inspection of the respective briefs, and after a study of the
documents in the Vatican which illustrate the history of Spain,
proposed for the signature of the Spanish and German
plenipotentiaries a document which recognized the ancient
right of Spain over the Carolines, but assuring protection and
many privileges to German subjects in those regions. The
agreement was signed on Dec. 13, 1885, in the apartments of
the Cardinal-Secretary of State in the Vatican; and im-
mediately the secular press of Europe and America

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true to its Masonico-Jewish inspirations, endeavored to*
minimize the importance of the event, now by ridicule, and
then by misinterpretation. As an excellent specimen of
these commentaries we reproduce that which was emitted
by the effervescent Bohemian Jew and naturalized French-
man, Heinrich Opper, better known as Henri de Blowitz,
the name which he adopted when he began to affect French
society : “ Bismarck suddenly found himself stuck in the
mud of that pitiable affair of the Carolines ; he was
dumbfounded by the Spanish paroxysms, for all his
calculations, all his cool combinations, were upset by the
tropical explosion. Not for an instant did he dare dream
of so grotesque an enormity as a war with Spain for the
Carolines. And nevertheless, all Spain was on its feet, look-
ing straight at the giant, and preparing for him his first rebuff.
It was then that in the brain of this Macchiavellian pachy-
derm, when he could neither advance nor retreat, there was
born an archaic idea which excited the surprise of the world.
With truly elephantic irony, Bismarck requested Leo XIII.
to arbitrate between Spain and Germany. Then there filtered
outward the atom of weakness which fermented in the con-
descending mind of Leo XIIL ; then the Pope, magnifying
the task with which he was entrusted, began to dream of a
revival of the days when the Holy See was arbiter of
everything. And the increasing height of the Pontiff dis-
played itself solemnly over this petty question.” More
sensible was the judgment emitted by Professor Geffcken,
who, in spite of liis want of sympathy with Leo XIII.,
allows us to perceive the importance of the pontifical
intervention, when viewed from a standpoint of the principles
involved, and of the consequences that might ensue. “ On
the part of the chancellor, the appeal to the Pope was
unfortunate, since it fortified the Ultramontane pretentions.
A short time previously, Windthorst, the leader of the Centre,
had declared publicly that the Pope governed the world ;
and Bismarck, by a recourse to the mediation of the Pon-
tiff, really endorsed this claim. And this was the Bismarck
who had said that the Pope was endangering his owi*
salvation; the Bismarck who had treated the Pope as

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merely the equal of an Armenian patriarch. The Catholic
masses naturally concluded that even the great chan-
cellor could not get along without the aid of their
Holy Father ; and that opinion was confirmed by the
letter which Leo XIII. sent to Bismarck when he forwarded
to him the decoration of the pontifical Order of Christ (1).
Conceived in most flattering terms, this letter reminded the
chancellor that his strength depended on the co-operation of
the Catholic Church, whose influence for the maintenance of
order can be fully exercised only when she is truly free.
The consequence was that Germany abandoned that which
she had officially claimed as hers by right ; and by her
acceptation of the supreme arbitration of the Pope, she
established a dangerous precedent ” (2).

Turning our attention now to the Far East, we find that
the most notable of the “ Acts ” of our Pontiff in those parts
was the institution of a regular ecclesiastical hierarchy for
the whole of Hindustan, in place of the apostolic-vicariates
which had so long been a necessary substitute for the ordin-
ary and regularly canonical authority. In a letter addressed
to all the bishops in India, dated June 24, 1893, His Holi-
ness, after expressing his love for the vast country which
was once the theatre of the heroic labors of St. Thomas the

(1) “ Leo XIII., Pope, to His Serene Highness, Prince Otho von Bismarck, greeting. The
recent dissension concerning the Caroline Islands having been happily terminated by the
acceptation of the conditions proposed by us. we have expressed our joy to His Majesty,
the German emperor; and we now wish to express the same feeling to Ycur Serene High-
ness, since it was you that suggested our mediation. We wish to acknowledge that It was.
In great part, due to your zeal that the difficulties in our way were banished ; ‘for from
the beginning to the end of the matter, you always seconded our efTorts. Therefore we
tender to you our thanks for having furnished us an occasion of laboring In the Interests
of peace. History indeed shows that such labor is not new to the Holy See; but a long
time has passed, since such an Intervention was proposed to a Roman* Pontiff, although
there is no kind of business more appropriate to the nature of our Pontificate. Free from all
prejudice, you judged the situation rather according to truth, than according to the opin-
ions and inclinations of others ; and you did not hesitate to confide in our impartiality.
By so doing, you obtained the approbat'on of all men who are not dominated by prejudice ;
above all, by the Catholics of the entire world, who are necessarilv pleased with the honor
done to their father. All men agree that your political sagacity has contributed to the
creation of a powerful German Empire, and it is natural that the solidity and prosperity of
that empire, based upon force, should be the chief object of your desires ; but vour per-
spicacity must have noticed the number of means which are at the disposal of the power
confided to us, for the maintenance of political and social order, especiallv when that power
is allowed its full libertv of action. In order that you may henceforward possess a
testimony of our sentiments, we name you a Knight of the Order of Christ, and send you
herewith the proper insignia.”

(8) Leo Xin. In the Eyes of Germany , p. 47.

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Apostle and of St. Francis Xavier, thus communicates the
object of his Brief : “ We desire, in accordance with our
duty, and to the utmost of our power, to extend to this
large portion of the earth the fruit of our aspirations to
heaven. Therefore we have reflected on a method of
reorganization of the Christian influence in the East Indies ;
and finally, we have decided on certain arrangements for
the good of the Catholic religion. In the first place, as
regards the right of patronage once enjoyed by the Portu-
guese in the East Indies, we have concluded a lasting
arrangement with His Most Faithful Majesty of Portugal ;
and thus there will be an end to those dissensions which
have so long existed among the Christians of Portuguese
India. We had already deemed it prudent to make verit-
able dioceses out of those communities which had hitherto
constituted vicariates-apostolic, thus subjecting those dis-
tricts to the general Canon Law ; and therefore it was that
by our Letters- Apostolic of Dec. 1, 1886, we established in
India a hierarchy consisting of eight ecclesiastical provinces,
namely, those of Goa — the patriarchal see, and those of
Agra, Bombay, Yerapoly, Calcutta, Madras, Pondichery,
and Colombo. In a word, we have endeavored to effect in
India whatever we thought likely to conduce to the develop-
ment of faith and piety.” On several occasions during the
course of our work, we have had occasion to allude to the
matter of Portuguese India and the claims of the Portu-
guese crown ; some details in regard to the dissensions, to
which Leo XIII. alludes in this letter, will interest the
reader. The right of patronage, conceded by the Holy
See to the crown of Portugal in the sixteenth century,
embraced the right of nomination to existiug bishoprics ;
that of refusal for the creation of any new dioceses ; that of
presentation to all benefices ; and an obligation, on the
part of every missionary to Hindustan, to become a Portu-
guese subject if he was not such already, and not to go to
his mission without the consent of the Portuguese govern-
ment, and that obtained, to sail only on a Portuguese ship.
Of course most of these rights, which had been conceded by
Borne only on condition that Portugal would protect and

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aid the Indian missions, in time became impracticable, if
not oppressive ; and to add to the inconveniences, Portugal,
lost the greater part of her Indian territory, and did not
keep her promises to the Holy See in regard to the remain-
der. Pope Gregory XVI. tried to remedy the evils which
beset the Church in the territories over which the Portu-
guese, though they had lost all civil power therein, still
claimed ecclesiastical influence. He instituted vicariates-
apostolie, placing their incumbents under tLe immediate
jurisdiction of the Holy See, and determining exactly the
limits of each ordinary’s authority. The Portuguese govern-
ment, then, as we have seen, a Masonic creation, resisted
these reforming measures of the Pontiff ; it was aided by its-
creature, the archbishop of Goa, and then began the
“Schism of Goa,” sustained by a number of Indo-Portu-
guese priests, and a fair number of seculars. When the*
first schismatic prelate of Goa died, his successor ordained
about six hundred wretches whom he scattered among the
missions, where they scandalized Catholic, heretic, and pagan
* alike by their immoralities. Shame induced the Portuguese
to conclude a Concordat with Pius IX., embodying several
remedial clauses ; but of these only one, that which recog-
nized the jurisdiction of the Goan prelate over all the rebels
to the authority of the vicars-apostolic, did not remain a dead
letter. However, this Concordat terminated the schism,,
although it entailed the evil of a double jurisdiction, that of
the vicars-apostolic over the Catholics who had remained
faithful during the schism, and that of the archbishop of
Goa over the reconciled schismatics. Leo XHI. determined
to put an end to this anomaly, especially since the Goan
priests were destitute of every priestly virtue. By order of
the Pontiff, in 1884, Cardinal Jacobini informed the Portu-
guese government that the Holy See could no longer tolerate
the condition of affairs in India ; but the Masonic reply
brought no encouragement to the Pope. Finally, our Pon-
tiff made an eloquent appeal to the king himself ; and His
Faithful Majesty took the matter into his own hands, to the*
great disgust of his Masonic cabinet, thus enabling Leo*
XIII. to inform the Indian bishops that he had concluded a.

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favorable and “ lasting arrangement with the Portuguese
sovereign.”

In an apposite dissertation on Christianity in Japan (1),
we have seen how Leo XIII. established a regular hierarchy
in that now enterprising empire ; we must now allude to a
negotiation which is in progress in China as we write (June,
1899), and which will probably have an important and
favorable effect upon the progress of the true faith in the
Middle Kingdom. In 1881 the Chinese government had
caused word to reach the Holy See, not in diplomatic, but
nevertheless trustworthy fashion, that it would be pleased if
His Holiness would appoint a nuncio to Pekin. No notice
of this overture was taken ; but in 1885, when the Chinese
omperor had received a letter from the Pontiff, asking His
Majesty to protect the Christians in his empire, the rumor
of an early diplomatic relationship between the courts of
the Vatican and Pekin gained consistency in the latter city ;
and in January, 1886, Mr. Dunn, the Director of the Anglo-
Chinese Customs, presented to the Holy See credentials
empowering him to negotiate for the creation of the desired
nunciature. It transpired afterward that behind Mr. Dunn,
as he worked for the residence of a Papal nuncio in Pekin,
was the strength of the Triple Alliance, supported by
England. This very fact, which was known by the French
government, may have influenced that government to oppose
the project, when the Vatican, out of deference to the
susceptibilities of a nation which had been, from time
immemorial, the universally acknowledged protector of all
Christians in the East, asked for its views. This protector-
ate of all things Christian in the East has ever been one
of the chief glories of France, although in our day it has
been changed to a merely political and commercial interest.
But whether the government of France was royal or
republican, Catholic or atheist, the average Oriental felt like
his ancestors of the Middle Age in regard to the eegis of
France. To break up this French influence in the East was
a sworn end of the alliance between Germany, Italy, and
(wonderful to relate) Austria ; an opportunity to destroy it

t * v v.. cii. 12.

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in China was furnished by the meditated aupointment of a.
Papal nuncio to China, for with that official on the ground, .
the French ambassador would have no reason for interfering in
Chinese Christian matters. Once that the religious hegemony
of France in China would be broken, it would not be difficult
to cause the weakening of French prestige to be felt in the
Levant. Leo XIII. knew that the scheme was meant as a
trap for France ; and he was determined that the interests
of France should not suffer, much as he might desire the
nunciature to be a thing of fact. He assured the French
government that the Holy See gladly recognized the French
protectorate over the Christians in the Orient ; but the head
of the French cabinet of the day, Freycinet, persisted in his
refusal to countenance any change in the status quo of the
relations between the Vatican and the court of Pekin.
Therefore the Pontiff temporarily resigned himself to an
abandonment of his design ; and in the meantime the men
of the Triple Alliance, sustained by England, put forth
every effort to win the confidence of the Catholics through-
out the world, but especially in the Holy Land and in all
the Eastern Missions. Every means was adopted to “ foster
vocations ” among the German Catholics for these missions,
in order to overcome the immense preponderance .(about
nine-tenths) of the French element The Propaganda was
asked to believe that the German Lutherans were dying
with zeal for the propagation of the Catholic faith ; the
Franciscans in Palestine were loaded with favors. Then
came the opera bouffe “ pilgrimage ” of William II. to
Jerusalem, during which the imperial cerebral gyrations
were meant to convey the impression that French influence
in the Orient had yielded place to that of a new line of
Barbarossas. Then Cardinal Kopp and other clerical
emissaries were sent to Rome by the imaginative Kaiser, with
intent to cajole the eminently practical Leo XIII. ; but a
pontifical letter to Cardinal Langenieux, sent in August, 1898,
showed that the Pope appreciated the imperial policy at its
true value, although that policy had been endorsed by the
German Catholic party, which, without a Windthorst to
guide it, had, as we have frequently noticed, succumbed

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to the wiles of Berlin. Twelve years had elapsed since the
fitfct attempt of the Triple Alliance to supplant the French
influence in Pekin, when, aided by the fortuitous prominence
which a recent massacre of two German missionaries in Shan
Tung gave to German interests in those parts, the Alliance
repeated its enterprise. Our Pontiff agreed to the establish-
ment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the
court of Pekin ; but he checkmated the Alliance, and won
the sympathies of the French Bepublican government by
his proviso that there should be in Pekin not a nuncio, but
an apostolic-delegate, who, with powers like those of the
apostolic-delegate in Constantinople, should recognize the
sole protectorate of France over the Chinese Catholics (1).

Amid the multifarious and nearly continual annoyances
which are entailed upon the Holy See by its subjects of the
Oriental Rites — annoyances wrhich the authorities of the
Propaganda have come to consider as mere matters of
routine, so natural do they appear, there occur, now and then,
some events which are not only consoling to the Father
of all the Faithful, but which seem to indicate that the day

(1) At this time there was Issued an imperial decree guaranteeing protection to Catholics
throughout the empire. The Mi&ions Catholiquas of Lyons gives the full text, which
consists of a preamble and five articles. The preamble runs thus: “Churches of the
Catholic religion, the propagation of which has long been authorized by the imperial gov-
ernment, being now erected in all the provinces in China, we are desirous of seeing the
people and the Christians live in peace, and in order to render the protection of the Chris-
tians easier, it has been arranged that the local authorities shall exchange visits with the
missionaries, under the conditions specifled below.” The first three clauses of the decree
are devoted to fixing the rank in which Catholic missionaries shall be held by the imperial
officials. Bishops are declared equal in rank to viceroys and governors ; vlcars-general
and archpriests to judges and treasurers, and priests to prefects. Ecclesiastics, having
business with the government, can call upon officials or equal rank. The fourth and fifth
clauses fix the manner in which, when matters arise which call for adjudication between
the civil and the ecclesiastic authorities, action shall proceed. The government authori-
ties are bidden to conduct all negotiations without unnecessary delay and In a conciliatory
manner ; and the missionaries, both bishops and priests, are commanded to “ exhort the
Christians to strive to do good. In order to maintain the good repute of the Catholic
religion, and act so that the people may be content and grateful.” Another feature of the
decree is that it recognizes the Holy Father as a sovereign. It bestows upon him the
designation of KUw-Hoang, which means “ Emperor of Religion.” Mgr. Fairer of Pekin,
who. being on the spot, is certainly qualified to speak of the importance of this decree,
declares that In consequence of its promulgation. Catholic bishops “ possess to-day a rank
and power which they have never had up till now in China.” He adds that while tho
edict may not exempt the Catholic missionaries wholly from persecution on the part of
rebels and bandits, it assures them of the government’s good will and protection , and he
declares that already— -the edict was issued March 15. 1899— a very large increase has*taken*
place In the number of Chinese conversions, whole districts. In some instances, embracing:
the faith.

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is not distant when the puerile vanity of the Christian East
will have succumbed to the truth which it once so trium-
phantly proclaimed. One of these consolations was given
to Leo XIII. by the end of what had been termed, during
several years, the “ New Schism of the Armenians.” This
“ new schism ” had originated at the time of the Vatican
Council. In the course of our work, we have frequently
observed how religious questions in the East are complicated
by those on nationalities, and how careful the Catholic priest
must be, lest he offend either national obstinacy or local
susceptibility. Now, when the Vatican Council was being
held, every effort was made by the “ opposition,” especially
by that part of it which was represented by Strossmayer,
bishop of Sirmium, to draw the Armenian synodals into
its embrace. When the crisis arrived, Strossmayer and his
companions submitted to the inevitable ; but the more inno-
cent Armenians — more innocent, because less educated —
returned to their homes with passions excited almost to the
point of schism, although they had signed the decree of
Papal Infallibility. When they had arrived in their respec-
tive dioceses, they found that a large number of their
compatriots had joined in rejecting the authority of Mgr.
Hassoun, their legitimate patriarch (1) ; they endeavored to
stem the tide of revolt, but under the leadership of Baliti-
arian, archbishop of Diarbekir, and of Gasparian, bishop of
Cyprus, the “new schismatics” had gained much headway.
Before long, a monk named Kiupelian became the head of the
movement, assuming the title of civil head of the Armenians,
and procuring illicit consecration as patriarch of Cilicia.
But in the course of a few years, the poor monk experienced

(1) The origin of this revolt must be ascribed to the discontent of many Armenians,
because of the bull Reversurus issued by Pius IX., on July 4, 1867, and regulating
the method of episcopal elections among this excitable people. At first the Bull produced
the desired effect ; but when it was misinterpreted, trouble ensued. The Armenian
religious of St. Anthony, most of whom ought to have been superior to tbe petty passions
of their uneducated compatriots, since they bad been trained either in Rome or in Venice,
openly renounced their allegianoe to Mgr. Hassoun ; and they were imitated by the
Armenian hotheads of Constantinople. In vain Pius IX. tried to reduce the rebels to an
observation of tbe dictates of common sense ; encouraged by the representative of Victor
Emmanuel in Constantinople, and by Bourse, the French ambassador, they refused to
hear the Pontifical .envoy. Consequently, on March 80, 1870, Pius IX. excommunicated
them.

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so much trouble with his schismatic followers, that he
resolved to abandon the paths of a deceitful ambition \ and
he threw himself at the feet of his patriarch, begging to be
received again into the communion of the Chair of Peter.
Then he addressed the Sublime Porte, as custom and even
necessity demands in the Turkish Empire, renouncing all
his usurped titles and privileges. On April 20, 1879, Kiu-
pelian knelt before the throne of Leo XIII., and entreated
His Holiness to restore him to the communion of the One,
Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Eoman Church. Then, still
kneeling, he read in a clear and firm voice a recantation of
all his errors ; whereupon the Pontiff, signing to him to arise,
addressed him in these terms : “ It is a great consolation to
a father to be able to press to his heart a son whom he had
deemed lost.” Then the Pope congratulated the convert on
his courage in abandoning the honors of earth for the cause
of religious truth, and he proceeded : “ While granting to
you full and ample pardon, we hereby make in your regard,
by our Apostolic authority, an exception to the general rules
of ecclesiastical discipline, allowing you to retain the titles,
insignia, and honors of the episcopal dignity which you
received from bishops who had deserted the fold of Catholic
unity.” The closing words of the Pontifical discourse were :
“ The Eastern Churches are indeed dear to us. We admire
their ancient glories ; and how happy we would be, if we
could behold them resplendent with their olden grandeur !”
As a sequel of this recantation of Mgr. Kiupelian, the Turk-
ish sultan, Abdul-Hamid, hearkening to the representations
of our Pontiff, reinstated Mgr. Hassoun in all the rights
which the “ new schism ” had taken from him ; and the
Armenian Catholics received nearly all the churches which
the schismatics had invaded. In 1888, the “ new schism ”
disappeared entirely, thanks to the exertions of Mgr. Azar-
ian, the Armenian Catholic patriarch of Constantinople,
who persuaded the two remaining bishops, as well as the
priests and notable laymen among the schismatics, to recant,
and who induced the sultan to withdraw the legal sanction
which he had accorded to the new community. While we
have our attention directed toward the Orient, it is well to

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note that in 1892, the Pontifical heart of Leo XIIL was
cheered by a letter from Mgr. Audon, archbishop of Ounmiah,
of the Chaldean Rite, informing His Holiness that abjuration
of schism and heresy had been made in the beginning of
June by Mar Chimoun, the patriarch of the Nestorians — a
prelate, in whose family the Nestorian Patriarchate had
been perpetuated during many centuries. Mgr. Mon-
tety, the delegate-apostolic in Persia, wrote that this ex-
ample of the patriarch had been followed by hundreds of
conversions ; and that while he was writing, Mgr. Audon,
accompanied by the mitred-abbot of the monks of St. Hor-
misdas, was travelling through the mountains of Kurdistan,
absolving entire villages, and confirming them in the faith.
A Nestorian bishop had just written to the delegate, saying :
“Soon we shall all be sons of one father.” The student
must know that these converted Nestorians, like all their
predecessors, did not enter the Latin Rite ; this Rite has
always been prohibited to the Orientals by the Holy See,,
so anxious is Rome to testify her respect for ancient and
approved Liturgies, and to preserve those Liturgies as
witnesses of the faith of the times in which they were
composed. The Nestorian converts entered the United
Chaldean Rite ; and when it was observed that priestly
conversions were very numerous, the authorities of the
Propaganda congratulated themselves that just two years
previously they had begun to print the Chaldean Breviary ,
which hitherto had existed only in manuscripts — very faulty
ones also, and not easily obtainable.

Before we withdraw our attention from the Orient, wo
must notice an event which occurred in Bulgaria in 1896, to
the great scandal of even lukewarm Catholics, to the delight
of all Eastern Schismatics, and to the amusement of free-
thinkers ; the so-called “ conversion ” of the two-year-old
Boris, prince-royal of Bulgaria, to the Bulgarian offshoot of
the Greek Schism. In 1887, the National Assembly of Bul-
garia elected as successor to Prince Alexander, who had
abdicated in 1886, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a.
son of Duke Augustus of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha by the*
Princess Clementine, daughter of King Louis Philippe of

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France. From the day of his arrival in his principality,
Ferdinand realized that his continued tenure of its crown
. depended on the good will of the Russian autocrat. No
means seemed so well adapted for the attainment of that good
will as his perversion to the State-Church of Bulgaria which
communicates with the “ Orthodox ” Russian Establishment ;
but it would appear that the audacity of the Coburger was
not without limits. However, in the beginning of 1896, it
was rumored throughout Europe that Ferdinand, a Catholic
prince, had expressed a willingness to allow his elder son
and heir to be confirmed and educated in the Greek Schism ;
and it was soon known that the child’s mother, Princess
Mary Louisa, daughter of the exiled Duke of Parma, had
written to the Pope, asking whether she could not leave a
husband who was practically a renegade, and at the same
time save her son from the danger menacing him. The
Pontiff’s reply was that she should remain at her husband’s
side, and trust all to God. But suddenly Prince Ferdinand
himself asked for an audience with His Holiness. , Of course
it was granted ; and this presumably sane man, a person of
education and of at least apparently Catholic convictions,
brazenly requested the Head of the Catholic Church to
grant him permission to hand over his two-year-old
son to schismatics and heretics for a religious training.
It is safe to say that no more sublime piece of effrontery was
ever acted in the Vatican ; and it is also safe to say that
Leo XIII. replied in terms befitting his office. What the
pontifical words were, Ferdinand took care not to tell ; but as
soon as he returned to his capital, he issued a manifesto to
the Bulgarians, declaring : “ In pursuance of the promise
given from the throne to the representatives of the nation, I
have used every possible endeavor, and have striven with
all my strength, to remove the difficulties which oppose the
attainment of the ardent desire of the entire nation that the
heir-apparent should enter the fold of the National Church..
After having fulfilled my duty in showing respect toward1!
those with whom it rested to smooth away these difficulties,
and after having seen the disappearance of my hopes with-
out finding, where I had expected, a wise comprehension of

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Bulgaria’s needs, I have resolved, of my own initiative,
and true to the oath given to my well-beloved people,
to surmount all obstacles, and to lay on the altar of the
Fatherland the greatest and heaviest of sacrifices. I therefore
announce to all Bulgarians that, on the 14th of the present
month, the Feast of the Purification, the rite of Holy Con-
firmation will be administered to the heir-apparent, Prince
Boris, Prince of Tirnova, according to the usages of the
National. Orthodox Church.” The manifesto was read by the
Bulgarian Prime Minister to the National Assembly. The
correspondent of the London Daily News wrote from Sofia
that the manifesto came as a surprise. “ It is not possible
to decide whom the Prince alludes to when he says that his
hope to find a wise and ready understanding for the wants of
Bulgaria has not been fulfilled. This may refer either to the
Pope or to the Princess ; more likely to the latter, from what
is reported of what happened yesterday. The Bulgarian
Prime Minister, Stoiloff, had an audience of Princess Mary
Louisa, to whom he expressed the devotion of the Bulgarian
people, its thanks for her charitable work, and for the favor-
able influence she had had upon social life. He assured her
that the nation fully valued the battle she was fighting with
her convictions. The Princess leaves Sofia on Friday, with
her younger son, and goes to Vienna. After a short stay
there, she leaves for Nice, in the neighborhood of which
she will remain for some time. The Prince and Princess,
it is asserted, are fully convinced that it is best for the
Princess to leave Sofia ; everybody hopes she will some day
return.” With their usual want of knowledge concerning
Catholic matters, most of the English, American, and German
journals soon stated that the Princess had asked the Pope
to annul her marriage with the Coburger, as though the
scion of the Bourbons did not know that even apostasy can-
not dissolve Christian matrimony. The fact is that in order
to encourage the heartbroken wife and mother, Leo XHI.
informed her that he would not proceed to any open and
nominatim excommunication of her husband ; but the poor
woman knew too well that the wretched weakling had
incurred the censures of the Church, ipso facto, and being

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moved also by a desire to safeguard the spiritual future of
her younger son, she proceeded with him to Vienna. Ferdi-
nand had enough of decency, perhaps even of remorse, to
abstain from force in order to prevent the loss of his wife
and second heir ; the separation has continued, and will
continue until Ferdinand undoes the fell work of his puerile
ambition, if indeed the schismatics allow him to undo it.

Turning our attention now to the more particularly
doctrinal features of the pontificate of Leo XIII., as those
features have been enunciated by his many Encyclicals, we
may say that probably the first place, in order of impor-
tance, should be assigned to the Encyclical JEterni Pair is,
issued on Aug. 4, 1879, and intended to assure the triumph
of Thomistic philosophy. For several years there had been,
among the Catholic educators of every land, marked symp-
toms of a general return to the old scholastic system, as
incarnated in its most illustrious representative, St. Thomas
of Aquino ; and with that system, to its essential concomi-
tants, unity of philosophical conception, severity of method,
and a positive yet temperate manner of discussing the
relations between body and soul. During the Perugian
episcopate of the future Leo XIII., there had flourished in
that diocese and under the auspices of His Eminence a
school of Peripateticism, at the head of which was the
future cardinal, Joseph Pecci. This school of Perugia,
together with Liberators, Signoriello, and other writers of
the Civiltd Cattolica, was the most aggressive and the most
logical of all the phalanxes in the army of the latest philo-
sophical Benaissance. Of course the Dominicans had
preserved what was their real cult of the Thomistic system ;
and the appearance of the works of their great Zigliara
showed that the Friars-Preachers were ready to make that
cult a vivid and not a somnolent worship. Other countries
than Italy, though in a very minor degree, had also turned to
St. Thomas as the one philosophical guide for moderns.
Spain furnished Gonzalez ; Germany had her Kleutgen ;
and even France and Belgium, so devoted to Descartes,
showed a few zealous Thomists. But it must be admitted that
in the generality of Catholic schools, St. Thomas and Peri-

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pateticism were almost unknown quantities ; and even in
Home, in the hearing of the illustrious school represented
by the Jesuits of the Civiltd Gattolica , other Jesuits, following
the lead of Tongiorgi, taught in the Roman College a system
which was pregnant with concessions to others. After years
of meditation, Leo XIIL raised the banner of unadulterated
Thomism. The student will not expect us to adduce the
reasons given by the Pontiff for his action ; suffice it to say
lhat he declared of the Angelic Doctor : “ There is no part
of philosophy which he does not treat with equal intelli-
gence and solidity. Distinguishing carefully reason and
faith, and uniting them amicably together, he has so safe-
guarded the rights and dignity of each, that reason, raised
by him to the highest summits, can mount no higher ; and
as for faith, she can expect from reason no greater help than
she has received from Si Thomas.” In the year following
the publication of the JEterni Patris , our Pontiff proclaimed
the Angelic Doctor patron of all Catholic Universities,
•Colleges, and Schools. On Oct. 15, 1879, in a letter to
Cardinal de Luca, Prefect of the Congregation of Studies, he
announced his intention of founding ip Rome an Academy
which would be devoted to the defence and explanation of
the Thomistic philosophy ; and he also declared his pur-
pose of publishing a new and complete edition of the works
of St. Thomas, according to the edition of St. Pius V., now
become exceedingly rare. In order to encourage the stu-
dents in Rome to prosecute their Thomistic indagations can
amove, the Pontiff announced that thereafter there would be
held, at stated times in his presence in the Vatican, public
disputations on scholastic subjects ; and in accordance with
that promise, students from all the Roman Colleges had
the honor of breaking philosophical lances, from time to
time, before one of the best philosophers of our day. In a
Brief dated Dec. 25, 1880, and addressed to Cardinal
Dechamps, archbishop of Malines, Leo XIII. expressed his
desire that a chair of Thomisic philosophy should be
established immediately in Louvain, in order to oppose a
solid defence against the materialistic attacks which were
favored by u that unbridled liberty of speaking and writing

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which now reigns in Belgium, and which engenders the
most detestable opinions.” In Louvain, as well as in the
Universities of Lille, Fribourg, and Washington, and in all
the more considerable of the ecclesiastical seminaries of
the Catholic world, the voice of the Pontiff was heeded,
and there the doctrine of the Angel of the Schools now
reigns triumphant (1).

The Encyclical Arcanum , which appeared on Feb. 14, 1880,
has for its subject that most abused of all social institutions
in our day, Marriage. After the preludes which would
naturally occur in such an instruction, His Holiness says in
regard to Christian Matrimony : “ There cannot subsist a
true and legitimate matrimonial contract, which is not, at
the same time, a Sacrament ; for Christ raised marriage to
the dignity of a Sacrament.” The Pope then proceeds to
show how the materialistic theories concerning marriage are
not only false, but pernicious, since they prevent the good
which God had in view when He endowed matrimony with
graces which would render the family happier and more
virtuous. The burdens of marriage, continues His Holiness,
often appear to be intolerable ; and then the civil authority
intervenes, granting divorce, a fruitful source of miseries, of
misfortune for children, of shame for women, and of license
for all. History shows, remarks the Pontiff, how well the
Popes have deserved of humanity by defending the sanctity
of marriage against powerful sovereigns like Henry VIII.,
Napoleon, etc. The Pope is careful to add that the Church
does not deny that the State has the right to legislate con-
cerning the purely civil effects of matrimony ; she clearly
recognizes the distinction between the two powers, civil and

(l) The following remarks of Mgr. T’Serclaes on the effect of the Mtemi Pcitris are
worthy of the reader’s attention : “ Peace Is now established In Catholic schools ; burning
dissensions agitate minds no longer. Even heterodox philosophers applaud the intellect-
ual activity which prompted the decree of Leo XIII., aud which has affected them so
adversely. Nowadays no one thinks that he can dismiss the arguments of the Scholastics
with some smart saying or some Jocosity concerning Aristotle. Everyone understands
that in the doctrines of the Stagyrlte and of St. Thomas are found tbe highest forms of
human thought. Men now study both these authors. For very many, this study has only
value as a scientific curiosity. For others, it is a kind of research for philosophical truth.
For all. it constitutes an evolution of non-Cathollc thought In the direction of Christian
philosophy. And this is an immense result of the Initiative taken by Leo XIII.” Loc.
cit ., Vol. 1.. p. 271.

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ecclesiastical, demanding only that neither one interfere in
the province of the other.

The Encyclical Sancta Dei Civitas , dated Dec. 3, 1880, is
. devoted to the obligation, on the part of the faithful, of
aiding the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, founded
at Lyons in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and of
sustaining also the kindred works, the Society of the Holy
Infancy, and that for the Schools in the East. It was upon
this last work that Leo XIII. chiefly relied for the success
of his many plans for the restoration of the East, the cradle
of our faith, to the true fold. The Encyclical 31 Hit cm 8 Dei
Ecclesia, issued on March 12, 1881, proclaimed a Jubilee ;
and called on the Universal Church for prayers on account
of the present “ intolerable position ” of the Holy See in its
ancient capital. “ The Head of the Church,” cries the Pontiff,
“ is deprived of liis rights, and is embarrassed in a thousand
ways in the exercise of his supreme ministry ; he possesses
now only a shadow of royal majesty, which has been left to
him as though to deride him.” Leo XIII. describes in
moving terms the recent spoliations of ecclesiastical property
in the Eternal City — spoliations which extended even to the
property of the Propaganda, which every preceding revolution
had spared. He speaks of the oppressive laws sanctioned
by the intruding government, the obstacles put in the way of
educating the young, the profanation of churches, the erection
of Protestant temples ; and he concludes that “ all our
courage, and all our human care, will be vain, if heaven does
not send us opportune succor.”

The Encyclical Diuturnum, published on June 29, 1881,
was one of the most important documents issued in this
pontificate, since it dealt with civil governmental authority.
The Pontiff begins with the principle that in every society
an irrepressible necessity calls for a ruling authority. No
rebellion, though it were arrogance incarnate, ever succeeded
in actuating the idea of no one person or authority being
obeyed. Nevertheless, ever since the religious innovations
of the sixteenth century, men have succeeded in lessening
greatly the force and majesty of authority ; in fact, since the
so-called Reformation, an exaggerated liberty has gradually

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come into vogue, and men have invented all sorts of systems
on the origin and constitution of society. At length it hap-
pened that certain philosophists of the eighteenth century
insisted that all authority comes from the people “ in such
fashion that the possessor of authority is only a delegate of
the people, and can be deprived of his authority by the
people who delegated him. Catholics think differently, and
derive authority from God, who is its natural and necessary
principle.” The Pope does not deny that the leaders of a
society may, in certain cases, be chosen by the multitude ;
but by this choice “ the right of government is not given —
authority is not conferred ; it is the person who will exercise
the authority that is designated.” In all this teaching there
is no question of political forms ; the Church can approve of
a republican or any other form of government, if it is just.
Therefore the people have a right, provided they do not
violate justice, to adopt that government which best suits
their character and favorite institutions. After a refutation
of the theory of a “ Social Compact,” Leo XIIL shows the
advantages of the Catholic doctrine ; and in the first place,
the security enjoyed by a government whose subjects obey
from conscientious motives. The sole reason for a refusal
of obedience, in the case of such subjects, would be a mani-
fest opposition between orders received and the natural law or
the commands of God. “ But in this case, it is the authority
of the ruler that is null ; it becomes null, when it violates
justice.” The Church has always tried to introduce her
doctrine on the nature of the civil power into the practical
lives of men. Therefore the early Christians obeyed the
Pagan emperors who persecuted them ; they refused obedi-
ence only when the divine law was involved. After the civil
power had become Christian, and the Church had become
the recognized moving spirit of civil society, the Church
gave to the civil power a species of consecration when the
Roman Pontiff instituted the Holy Roman Empire ; and that
institution would have proved most beneficent for both
Church and State, if princes and peoples had remained faith-
ful to the intentions of its founder, the Roman Pontiff. So
long as harmony reigns between Church and State, the •

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Church effectually pacifies the people when they rebel against
the State ; and she bears to the rulers the complaints of the
people. What have the false ideas on the civil power pro-
duced ? Nothing but seditions, license, carnage ; and now
all is tending toward Anarchy, Communism, or Nihilism.
Governments have no power of sufficient efficiency to resist
these excesses ; severe punishments avail nothing, for, as St.
Thomas and experience teach, fear only causes the victim to
wait for an occasion to revolt against its inspirer. Recourse
must be had to a principle of obedience more elevated than
fear ; and that principle is conscience, the fear of God. Leo
XIII. terminates his Encyclical with an invitation to rulers
to profit by the powerful assistance of the Church, and to
protect the Church, were it only for the good of the State.

The Encyclical Humanum Genus , dated April 20, 1884,
resumes the motives which have inspired the Church in
her condemnation of Freemasonry. As we have already
described these motives in our special dissertation on the
diabolical sect (1), and as the same motives have been con-
tinually placed in evidence during the course of our work, we
need not now repeat them. Leo XIIL declares that he wishes
not to accuse each Mason in particular, nor even each one of
the Secret Societies, of all the crimes which are committed
by the societies in general. Among the adepts, there are
some who ignore the veritable objects of their organizations ;
and among those who well realize what those objects are,
there may be some who do not approve certain consequen-
ces of their principles, while others may not dare to apply
those consequences. Be this as it may, rightly contends the
Pontiff, we must judge Freemasonry by its principles, rather
than by a few particular facts. Then the Pope discourses
on Naturalism, the principles of which Freemasonry reduces
to action ; and he refers to the deliberations in the Grand
Orients of our day concerning the advisability of retaining
among the statutes of the order that which recognized the
existence of God — deliberations which resulted in a schism
.among the sectarians (2). As a matter of fact, the Pope
might have added, Atheism or Pantheism, on the part of a

(1) Vol. lv., cb. 18. (2) TW, p. 486.

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candidate for Masonry, is no bar to his initiation in any
Lodge in the Masonic world. The Pontiff lays much stress
on the efforts of Masonry to transform the civil laws, wher-
ever it attains to power, in a Naturalistic sense ; especially
in the matter of divorce, and of indifferentism in the educa-
tion of youth. Attention is also drawn to the Naturalistic
principle, so eagerly propagated by Masonry, that all author-
ity must be rejected which is not derived from man himself.
In conclusion, Leo XIII. renews all the condemnations of
Freemasonry, emitted by his predecessors.

The Encyclical Immortale Dei , issued on Nov. 19, 1885,
may be regarded as a development of the Diuturnum . Leo
XIIL reminds us that when Gregory XYL and Pius IX. (the
latter chiefly in his Syllabus) condemned certain modern
governmental theories, the pontifical reprobation was not
visited upon any particular form of government, considered
in itself ; nor was that reprobation intended for any greater
or less share of the people in governmental matters — a share
which is often useful, and sometimes obligatory. Nor from
these condemnations by Gregory XYI. and Pius IX. should
any one pretend to conclude that the Church is opposed to
real liberty ; nor should it be supposed that the Church
condemns the political toleration of false religions, when such
toleration is demanded by a necessity of obtaining some
great good, or of avoiding some great evil. The Church
approves the liberty which fosters prosperity, and which
protects the State against arbitrary violence. The Church
has ever encouraged the precautions taken against the tyranny
of rulers ; she ever protected municipal franchises, as well as
all measures which secured in equal measure the honor and
happiness of all citizens. Instead of being an enemy of
modern inventions, the Church favors everything which tends
to develop science and progress. Leo XIII. calls on Catho"
lies to heed the judgment emitted by the Holy See in regard
to those modern false liberties, the evil fruits of which are
■evident to every observer. Undoubtedly a government which
tyrannizes over its Catholic citizens can be tolerated with
difficulty ; but “ the principles on which that government is
L>ased may be such as admit of no ^ejection.” It is very

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necessary, insists the Pontiff, that Catholics should share in
the administration of municipalities, were it only in order to
procure a Christian education for their children. His Holi-
ness would like to see all Catholics, in the emergencies of
to-day, forget intestine discords, and 'turn all their energies
to the advancement of the Church and of true civil progress.

The Encyclical Libertas, published on June 20, 1888y
begins appropriately with the name which produces so many
throbs, sometimes exultant, more frequently despairing, in
the human heart ; for the document deals exhaustively with
the theories of true and of false liberty, and its sole object
may be said to be a proof that when the Church is charged
with being the foe of liberty, “ the reason of that accusation
is to be found in the erroneous idea of liberty which the
accuser has formed.” Of all the Encyclicals of Leo XIII.,
this one lends itself least readily to the process of synopsis ^
but the Pontiff himself, at the end of the document, saves
one such labor to some extent, when he specifies the various
gradations of modern Liberalism. He regards as the worst
kind of Liberalism that which refuses, in both public and
private life, all obedience to God. Next to this species, he
finds the greatest wickedness in those Liberals who would
submit indeed to the Natural Law, but who repudiate
Kevelation, at least in the social order ; and this class of
Liberals, just like the first, cries loudly for an entire “ separa-
tion of Church and State ” — a pernicious error, in their inter-
pretation of the phrase, since the two powers, although of
different dignity and different ends, were meant by God to aid
each other. These “ separationists of Church and State ” are
of two classes. Some would have governments act as though
there were no such an institution as the Church, leaving
religion among such matters as are purely private. Others
deny to the Church the rights belonging to a real society,
allowing to her simply the right to exhort and entreat her
members, recognizing in her no legislative or coercive power ;
and these gentry quite consistently subject the Church to
the State, precisely as they subject all other societies.
Besides these Liberals who are avowed “ separationists of
Church and State,” there is a third class composed of persons-

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who do not approve the specious maxim, but who contend
that the Church ought to be less uncompromising in her
attitude toward the spirit of the day. To this class the Pontiff
replies that their demand would be reasonable, if there were
a question of arrangements which might be consonant with
truth and justice ; but that the Church, the divinely-appointed
guardian of truths which are necessary for all times and
circumstances, can never keep silence when error and
injustice are offered for the veneration, or at least for the
approval of men. “ It follows from what has been said,”
continues the Pope, “ that it is not permissible to accord
freedom of the press, of thought, of teaching, and of worship,
as so many rights inherent in the very nature of man ;
although all these liberties may be granted for just reasons,
on condition that they do not degenerate into license ” (1).
This Encyclical was completed by another, beginning : Sapi-
ent ice Christiance , dated on Jan. 10, 1890, and treating of the
principal duties of Christians, but also manifesting the prin-
ciples which have regulated the policy of Leo XIII. in the
various countries of Christendom — principles which have
inspired the advice which he has given so frequently to
Catholics of every nationality, although at the same time he
adapted them to the particular necessities of each case.

On Oct. 15, 1890, Leo XILL addressed to the Italians an
Encyclical in their own language, warning them of the
dangers attending the present religious situation in their
land. “ If there were a question of our person alone,” says
the Pontiff, “if we did not1 see Italy menaced in her faith,
and rushing to her ruin, we would bear all outrages in
silence.” Then he dilates on the plan of the sectarians,
“ not a new plan, unless it be new in its audacity, in its
ferocity, and in its rapidity of execution ” — the destruction

(1) The London Saturday Review , one of the most sterling Protestant periodicals In
England, said of this Encyclical : “ After a careful reading of this long document, we have

not discovered one Idea which all sincere Christians might not accept When we think

of th * vast influence of the Catholic Church, and of the obedience of Its numerous hierar-
chy to the instructions of its supreme head, we must believe that these words of Leo XIII.,
so firm and so logical, will produce happy results in the multitude of the faithful. In a
time when faith is so cruelly attacked, it is consoling to read this Encyclical, so full of
dignity, and to observe that it does not contain one word of bitterness or of reproach, and
that it has not a trace of fanaticism or of narrow-mindedness.11

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of the temporal power of the Pope the abolition of religious,
orders, the enforced conscription of ecclesiastics, the rob-
bery of Church property, the secularization of everything
ecclesiastical, the enforcement of civil marriages, and
exclusively lay instruction of the young. In Italy, “ all the
laws which can outrage the Church, all the measures which
can trammel her, are first proposed, discussed, and carried in
the Masonic Lodges. To ensure the passage of such enact-
ments, it is sufficient that they be known as injurious to the
Church.,, The Pontiff declares that “ it is necessary for the
world to realize that the struggle between the Papacy and the
Italian Revolution is of an essentially religious nature ” ;
and that now it is the first duty of every Italian to defend
the inestimable treasure of his faith, “ no matter at what
cost, and under the pain of eternal damnation.” Then the
Pope details the methods appropriate for the war which the
Italians must wage ; and perhaps the chief among their
weapons, after prayer, is to be the Catholic press. As a
counterpart to the present false and dangerous situation in
Italy, the Pontiff draws a picture of an Italy reconciled with
the Holy See. He exhibits a restoration of a spirit of duty,
now unknown ; a solution of social questions facilitated ;
“ public liberty substituted for license ” ; civil concord re-
established. As for Rome especially, “ placed again under
the peaceful and paternal sceptre of her Pontiff, she would
be once more that which Providence and the centuries made
her ; that is, instead of being reduced to the rank of a capital
for a particular kingdom, the prey of a dualism of two sover-
eign powers which is contrary to her history, she would be
again the capital of the Catholic world, grand with all the
majesty of religion and of the supreme priesthood, the mis-
tress and model of civilization for all the nations.”

On July 16, 1892, Leo XIII. addressed an Encyclical to
the bishops of Italy, Spain, and the two Americas, in praise
of the great Italian sailor and discoverer, Columbus. The-
people of the United States of America were then pre
paring for a grand World’s Fair, which was to honor the fourth
centennial of the discovery of the New World ; and our
Pontiff wished to show that the Holy See always took part ini

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the glorification of great and honorable enterprises. “ With-
out doubt,” said His Holiness, “ the Church reserves her
special honors for supernatural virtues, since they are
connected with the eternal salvation of souls ; but neverthe-
less, she does not despise the other virtues, nor does she

fail to appreciate them at their worth Certainly God is

admirable in his saints ; but the traces of His divine strength
also appear in those who have been distinguished by
brilliancy of soul — in men whose elevation of mind and
sparks of genius could have come only from their Creator.”
Then in the name of the Catholic Church, the Pope speaks
of the discoverer of America as “ Columbus noster — our
Columbus”; for it was the religious motive, the Catholic
faith, that inspired the grand enterprise. “ Deeply engraved
in his heart was the resolution to open up new lands to the
Gospel ” ; for we know that as soon as he appeared before the
Spanish sovereigns, “ he assured them that they should not
hesitate to patronize his ambition, since their names would
be immortal, if they helped to carry the name and teachings
of Jesus Christ to those distant regions.” And when his
prayers had been heard, “he attested that he had besought
God that the Spanish sovereigns, aided by the divine grace,
would persevere in their intention to send the Gospel to
those new countries. Finally, Columbus declared that he
intended to ask Pope Alexander YL for some apostolic men
who would preach the faith in the new regions. One can
imagine the joy with which Columbus wrote to Raphael
Sanchez, the first w}io returned from the Indies to Lisbon,
that ‘ they should render to God never-ending thanks for
His having deigned to bless their enterprise, seeing that
now Jesus Christ could rejoice in heaven and on earth
because of the salvation of innumerable peoples who were but
recently going to perdition.’ ” This was the spirit, says the
Pontiff, which sustained Columbus “ amid the contrary
opinions of the wise, the refusals of princes, the tempests of
the ocean, and the continuous vigils which often menaced
his life. Then there were the combats with the savages,
the conspiracies of the wicked, the perfidies of the envious,
the calumnies of his detractors*, and finally the chains with

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which the innocent man was loaded.” The Pope shows
Columbus as the worthy accomplisher of the divine plan :
“ When about to brave the ocean, he orders the adventurers
to perform acts of expiation for their sins ; he prays the
Queen of Heaven to direct the course of the ships ; and
before giving the order to make sail, he invokes the august
name of the Most Holy Trinity. Then, during the voyage,
when the crews murmured, he knew that he was in the
presence of Cod, and he preserved his tranquillity of spirit
His intention was manifested in the names which he gave
to the newly-discovered islands ; and whenever he was about
to land on one for the first time, he took possession of it in
the name of Jesus Christ Wherever he landed, he im-
mediately planted the sacred sign of the Cross ; and he was
the first to chant in the new territories that sw'eet name of
the Redeemer which he had so often sung to the accompani-
ment of the murmuring waves during his trying voyage.
Whenever he founded a Spanish colony, the first building
erected was a church, in which all of the popular fe asts
could be celebrated with august ceremonies.’ ”

On Nov. 18, 1893, our Pontiff published his Encyclical
Providentwsimus Dens, treating of the excellence of the Sacred
.Scriptures, and of the Protestant and Rationalistic methods
of so-called criticism in their regard. After a development
of the saying of St. Jerome that an ignorance of the Scrip-
tures is an ignorance of Jesus Christ, the Pope details the
■solicitude ever manifested by the Church for the explana-
tion of Holy Writ to the people, beginning with the olden
“Apologists” and the schools of Alexandria and Antioch,
and ending with the Scholastics, “among whom the palm
belonged to Si Thomas of Aquino,” and the many Catholic
scholars whose labors were facilitated by the invention of
the printing-press. The Protestant idea of private inter-
pretation is refuted by the Pontiff ; but he lays greater stress
on the Rationalistic theories, wrhich, in last analysis, so many
of the modern Protestant Biblieists adopt. These votaries
of the “ higher criticism ” are more radical than were the
original Protestants ; and it must be admitted that they are
iar more logical. “ They discern in the Scriptures only

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fictions and human inventions; according to them, the
Bible gives us pure fables or lying histories. They find no
prophecies or divine oracles, but either predictions composed
after the events, or simple intuitions of the human mind.

In fine, they would attribute the Gospels and the Apostolic
writings to authors very different from those to whom
they have been assigned.” The Pontiff devotes some space
to practical instruction of the professors who must train
ecclesiastical students in methods adapted to a refutation of
this so-called system. As for the comparatively recent
development of these theories, the “ perverse art so injur-
ious to religion, an art which has been dignified by the name
of ‘ higher criticism,’ and which consists in judging of the
origin, integrity, and authority of each book, only by what
is termed internal evidence ; it is certain that in historical
questions, such as that of the origin or preservation of the
Scriptures, the testimony of history ought to weigh more
than any other. As for the internal evidence, it possesses, as
a rule, only value sufficient to warrant its use by way of
confirmation.” The Pontiff calls attention to the difficulties
which are so often adduced from the natural sciences by so
many heterodox critics. “ There would never be any dis-
agreement between the theologian and the physicist, if each
would remain within his own domain, taking care to follow
the advice of St. Augustine ‘ to affirm nothing rashly, and not
to present the unknown as certainly known ’ (1). . . .When
scientists advance certain proofs for an assertion, the inter-
preter of Scripture ought to be able to prove that the said
assertion does not at all contradict the Bible, if the Bible
is properly understood ; and let the interpreter remember *
that very often things are advanced as certain by the scientists,
only to be afterward rejected with equal certainty by
their successors.” Undoubtedly, admits His Holiness, it
may happen that the meaning of a certain passage in the
Bible seems to be doubtful. “ In order to solve the difficulty,
the authorized rules of interpretation will avail much ; but
it is absolutely forbidden to restrict inspiration to only some
parts of the Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer

(1) In Gen., Op. Imperf IX.

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was himself deceived. In fact, there can be no toleration
for the system of those who, in order to escape these diffi-
culties, dare to say that in the Scriptures divine inspiration
affects only matters of faith and morals. These persons seem
to believe that when there is a question of the genuineness of a
text, we should not inquire as to what God said, but rather seek
for the reason of His saying it. All the Scriptures recognized
by the Church as canonical were written, in their entirety and
in all their parts, under the dictation of the Holy Ghost It
follows, therefore, that either the Catholic idea of divine
inspiration is perverted, or God is represented as the author
of error, by those who assert that there can be anything
false in the authentic texts of Holy Writ.” The Pontiff
warns all Biblical scholars and all physicists that God, the
Author of Nature, is also the Author of our Holy Books ;
and that consequently in those writings there cannot be any
real contradiction of the truths of Nature. When there seems
to be a contradiction, “ you must try to compel its disappear-
ance, either seeking from wise theologians the more probable
sense of the passage in question, or examining more carefully
the force of the arguments which militate against it Nor
should you despair, if the apparent contradiction still
persists ; for since truth cannot contradict truth, you may be
certain that an error has crept either into the interpretation
of the sacred text, or into the contrary thesis. At any rate,
let the decision be suspended ; it has often happened, as we
have said, that some science would make much ado about
some one of its objections against the Scriptures, only ta
see the objection abandoned as absurd in later times.”

Now that we approach the end of our review of the pon-
tificate of Leo XIII., the moment when the reader will expect
from us a judgment as to the calibre of this “ Lumen in Ccelo ”
of the nineteenth century, we find that we prefer to question
the gentlemen of the Liberal school concerning that judg-
ment. Let us listen, in the first place, to that valiant Spanish
republican, Castelar. Writing to Boyer d’Agen, on April 11,
1892, in reply to that editor's request for an article on this
subject, to be inserted in his work on Leo XIII. in the Eyes
of His Contemporaries , the most eloquent of all modem

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Liberals emitted the following, among other noteworthy
reflections : “ To-day, when the Church realizes that it is
her mission to furnish religion to free peoples, and when
she calls the French Catholics to peace and harmony by an
acceptance of the Republic, a man who has been a democrat
during his entire life finds that all is now accomplished
which he announced in our immortal Constituent Assembly
of 1879 : ‘ No, deputies,’ said the writer of these lines in the
session of May 5, * I do not belong to the world of theology
and of faith. I think I belong to the world of philosophy
and of reason. Nevertheless, if it happens that I ever return
to the world that I have left, I shall not embrace that
Protestantism whose iciness freezes my soul, freezes my
heart, freezes my conscience — that Protestant religion icliich is
the eternal enemy of my country , of my race , of their history .
Indubitably I shall return to the beautiful altar which once-
inspired the grandest sentiments which I have ever experi-
enced during the entire course of my life ; I shall once again
kneel with both knees before that Most Holy Virgin who
calmed my first passions with her tender smile ; I shall once
more fill my entire being with the perfume of the holy incense,
with the strains of the organ, and with the pictures on the
stained glass w'liich showed me the golden wings of the
angels who were the continual companions of my soul in its
infancy. And at the hour of my death, deputies, I shall
ask for a refuge in the arms of the Cross, in those arms
which are stretched to-day over that little spot of earth
which is to me the most beloved and most venerable on earth
— the grave of my mother (1). ... I must tell you, deputies,.

(1) Here Castelar notes that the Diarin de ScMonat, from which he quotes the report of
his speech, observed that this passage was received by the entire Cortes with frenzied
applause, so true is it that every Spaniard must be a Catholic, at least in heart. And he
adds : “ I note this applause, not from any puerile vanity as an orator, but because I wish/
to show that when I thus expressed my sentiments in regard to the Catholic religion, I
struck the key-note which dominated the hearts of us democrats (of Spain), as they yearned
for a reconciliation between the spirit of modern progress and their religious belief, the
true source of spiritual life.” Castelar was a Freemason during the whole of his political
life : his death (May, 1899) was sudden ; but we may well hope that at that dread moment
an Act of Contrition was made by the grand genius who dared to express such sentiments,
as those in the text in the face of a Cortes (republican) which was nearly entirely Masonic.
From the day on which Castelar stigmatized the Protestant system as " the enemy of his
country and his race,” and declared that he hoped to die at the feet of Mary, and “ in the
arms of the Cross,” throughout the world the Protestant, Masonic, and Judseo-Masonic

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that I felt myself impelled to return to the religion of my
ancestors — a religion which I have never totally abandoned , no,
never l — at the very moment when, by the providence of God,
Leo. XIII was raised to the pontifical throne ’ (1). . . . The
following words, taken from a discourse which was pro-
nounced on Oct. 2, 1880, are so applicable to the present situa-
tion, that it seems impossible that twelve years have passed
since they were spoken : ‘ Everything leads us to suppose that
the Papacy, in the person of the venerable Leo XIII., tends
toward a reconciliation. Well, let us also seek for recon-
ciliation. ... I understand how a certain Ghibelline emperor
can flatter the persistent Germanic aspirations by flaunting
the pictures of Arminius and Luther in the face of Home ;
but I cannot understand a similar conduct on the part of a
French Republic. The sentiments now triumphant in the
religious dissensions of France terrify me, because of their
Jacobin character; and the Jacobin character terrifies me
because another Robespierre must be inevitably the predeces-
sor of another Napoleon. If our respect for liberty prevents
our taxing interest, profit, and exchange, that same respect
for liberty should prevent our imposing a tax on prayer, piety,
and repentance.’ I quote these olden expressions of mine in
order to show the true enthusiasm and tenacity with which we
desired a policy such as Leo XIII. has formulated ; and in
order to show our hope that the same policy will be con-
tinued in a wise successor of this Pontiff, and then be trans-
mitted to the coming century, so that there may ensue a
better condition of religious affairs than this century has

press discerned in the former idol a man of no admirable qualities whatever. Of course
the volte-face was to be expected on the part of such gentry ; but we were not prepared
to read in a periodical edited by a self-avowed Catholic, a similar judgment on the repent-
ant Freemason. In the Cosmopolitan for Aug.. 1899, in the columns devoted to “ Men
.and Events " which are presumably editorial, the death of the great republican received
this notice : " The man who died was a pessimist, a truckler to power, a considerer of his
own comfort and success. The noble manhood which bad been given up to the defense of
republicanism and the rights of the people died ten years before the physical Castelur
• expired. High Ideals, noble aspirations, willingness to sacrifice life for his countrymen,
had long since disappeared."

(1) Here Costelar notes how, when he was Chief of the Executive in the short-lived
•Spanish Republic, he tried to procure harmony with the authorities of the Church ; and he
recalls with satisfaction that this conduct entailed for him the loss of the presidency of the
State. " And I reveal no State secret," he added, "when I declare that I gained the
enmity of the French republicans on account of my severe and constant condemnation of
their persecution of the clergy and of all religious ideas."

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been able to produce. Human thought will never realize
all the moral felicity, all the spiritual light, all the practical
utility, which will accrue to the nations of Latin race from
the blessing given by a Roman Pontiff who honors liberty
and democracy.” Such was the judgment emitted by Cas-
telar on the pontificate of Leo XHI. When Canovas del
Castillo was asked by Boyer d’ Agen to commit lxis impres-
sions on the subject to paper, he wrote : “ If some good
Catholic were to undertake to imagine a Pope who* would
conform to the type desired by him, and who would also be
capable of fulfilling the obligations which these difficult
times impose on the Supreme Pontificate, could that Cath-
olic evoke a fitter candidate than the one whom Providence
has given to the Church in the august person of Leo XIII. ? ’r
We have seen already the estimate formed by that eminent
coryphee of the Italian Revolution, Rattazzi, Thiers’ “ most
clearsighted statesman in the world,” concerning the per-
sonality of our Pontiff. Let us now hearken to a petty
peroration by Crispi. On Feb. 26, 1892, this luminary of
the Lodges wrote : “ Until 1887, I had supposed that Leo
XIII. would be reconciled with Italy. Regarding him as a
superior man, I could hope that he would govern the Church
with independence of spirit, pretending no longer to any
civil power, and submitting to the laws of the State, in
accordance with the commands of the Divine Redeemer. . . .
But I became more and more convinced that the Jesuits, on
whom Leo XIII. had conferred new privileges, are sufficiently
strong to acquire domination over the grandest intelligences..
Then I remembered a saying of an eminent statesman whom
I had met in Berlin, fifteen years before. The remark was
to the effect that when a man dons the tiara, be he Liberal
or Reactionist, he is soon conquered by the Curia Romana ;
and if he does not yield, he will probably be conquered
materially — in his person” In a note to this sage commun-
ication, Crispi gives to the ecclesiastical world the startling;
information that “ during the first years of his pontificate,
Leo XIII. presented himself as a Thomist, but thereafter he
was a Jesuit — a real contradiction, and undergone simply
because of his yearning for temporal power.” Another

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famous Italianissimo, Giovanni Bovio, relieves himself of his
bile with this emission : “ In our day a wise Pope is no more
possible than a holy one would be. A timidly enterprising or
a skeptically resigned-to-every thing Pope might be possible ;
and at the very most, we might have an able Pope. Leo
XIII., whose wounds are still fresh, is not resigned, and he
is not sufficiently enterprising ; for Italy and all Europe have
entered on a new order of things, and they look upon the
bawlings of the Pope as upon the squallings of a baby. Leo
is astute, for the atmosphere of the Vatican, during the last
six centuries, would corrupt even a St. Celestine ; but can it
be said that Leo is truly able ? . . . What has he done ? He
has called to his side the worst of counsellors — the Jesuits ;
and exalting those whom the best Popes scarcely tolerated,
he has shown that he does not know that in our day it is a
waste of time to follow the policy of the Jesuits. But if we
consider the advanced age of Leo, we must believe that he
will never succeed in escaping from the influence of ‘ the
black Pope and therefore his pontificate will leave no
traces. He will leave behind him too many Encyclicals,
and not one monument.”

We have just heard the judgments of two classes of
Liberals on Pope Leo XIII. ; and certainly they differ vastly
from each other, as might be expected when one class is at
least honest, and the other is palpably mendacious, slimy in
its hypocrisy, and beastly in its ferocity. Many large
volumes would not contain all the eulogies of Leo XIII. as
priest, Pontiff, and statesman, which have been pronounced
during the last few years by Catholic publicists of renown ;
nearly all regard him as the grandest figure offered to the
admiration of humanity in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. It were a gracious task to endow our work with
greater value by recording in it some of these tributes to a
glorious pontificate ; but as we have already exceeded the
limit of length necessarily determined for these dissertations,
we shall now adduce the judgment emitted by one of the many
prominent prelates who have grasped the significance of both
the Leonine personality and the Leonine pontificate — Cardi-
nal SatollL Undoubtedly, Cardinal Satolli is personally

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-devoted to Leo XIII., probably more tenderly devoted to
him than any other member of the Sacred College ; but not
for that reason should hi& testimony be charily received,
for, as Justin McCarthy says when commenting on the words
that we ttre about to quote, “ we cannot take account of any
great statesman’s life and public career, unless we pay some
attention to the opinions of his devotees. It must reckon
for something that a man was able so to impress his devotees.”
While Cardinal Satolli was still apostolic-delegate in the
United States of America, he thus summarized the purpose
and results of our Pontiff’s reign : “ It would seem as if
from the time when Leo XIII. succeeded Pius IX., he had
formed a grand plan, in which he took cognizance of all the
needs of humanity, and determined on the provisions he
would make for those needs during the whole course of his
Pontificate. We can best distinguish this design of the
Pope in three particular directions. Firstly, in the Holy
Father’s ardent zeal for the development of studies. Sec-
ondly, in the continued interest which he has shown in social
science. And thirdly, in his untiring efforts to bring peace
into the Christian countries by the spread of civilization,
the teaching of religion, and the promotion of concord
between Church and State. With regard to studies, Pope
Leo has already reared a monument of imperishable fame
by the successive acts of his Pontificate. Early in his reign
he turned his attention to the encouragement of the study
of classical literature, of philosophy and the natural sciences,
of theology and the kindred branches of sacred sciences,
such as Biblical knowledge and ecclesiastical history, and of
judicial sciences, especially of Roman Law and Comparative
Civil Law. To accomplish his aim he founded new chairs
and new institutions in Rome for these various departments
of literary and encyclopaedic knowledge, and called to his
assistance some of the most eminent and learned professors.
With regard to sociology, it is another of the Holy Father’s
glories that at this latter end of the nineteenth century, his
Encyclicals are regarded as so many admirable parts of a
grand doctrinal system, comprehensive and universal, em-
bracing all the social sciences, beginning with the fundamental

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theorems of Natural Law, and going on to the consideration
of the political constitution of States, and of every economic'
question. The whole world knows how well the Pope’s
Encyclicals have carried out his plan, and how, for this
reason, they have their own peculiar character, by which
they are distinguished from the pontifical utterances of other
Popes, even those of his immediate predecessor, Pius IX.
Turning again to his policy of pacification, the ecclesiastical
history of his pontificate, the civil history of Europe, the
universal history of the human race, will in the future nec-
essarily accord pages of the highest praise to Leo XIIL
Germany, Belgium, France, and Spain profess their bound-
less gratitude for the peqce-giving interventions of Leo XIII.
in many grave and critical emergencies, and for acts which
have been of the greatest moment to those nations. Asia
also and Africa will be found joining in the chorus and laud-
ing Leo, who has so often and so resolutely labored to re-
awaken those old and fossilized portions of the earth to a new
life of Christian civilization. Nor will America, through-
out its length and breadth, withhold its tribute of loyal and
generous esteem, veneration, and gratitude to Pope Leo for
those acts of his pontificate which have at various times been
promulgated, and by which he has shown his confidence
and hope in the grand future of this mighty nation.”

Much has been written . about the personal appearance
and manners of Leo XIII. ; and as in the case of Pius IX.,
whose external and mental characteristics were so different,
no man who has described them has been satisfied with the
picture that he produced. Undoubtedly there is much in
the atmosphere of the Vatican, in the religious and histor-
ical associations surrounding the sublimest personage on
earth — be his personality what it may — that renders human
language comparatively weak, when it essays a verbal nar-
rative of the emotions experienced in an audience with a
Roman Pontiff, or even during one of the sublime functions
at which the Pontiff officiates, or is simply present But
laying aside all that may be derived from the poetical or
from the historical, there is no doubt that the presence of
Pius IX. evoked feelings of positive filial affection for him.

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as well as sentiments of personal veneration, in all who
conversed with him during one blessed quarter of an hour.
That something akin to this feeling, as well as sentiments
of unbounded admiration of his intellect, are we excited by
anything like a personal relation with Leo XIII., is certain.
Theobald Cliartran, the eminent French artist who painted
the best portrait of our Pontiff that exists, the portrait
concerning the accuracy of which His Holiness wrote a
very neat and complimentary distich (1), thus recorded the
impressions produced in his mind by the many successive
sittings, to which the only half-willing Pontiff submitted :
“ When I was first received in private audience by Leo XIII.,
a few days after his elevation to the pontifical throne, I was
a pensioner of the Academy of France, and therefore very
young, and quite prone to grand enthusiasms. And never-
theless, when I found myself, last summer (1891), again in
the presence of this grand figure, after an interval of thir-
teen years, my emotions were far more agitating than they
had been on the previous occasion. Since 1878, the person-
ality of the great Pontiff has swayed the world so power-
fully, although genially, that I may defy his adversaries —
alas ! too many — to refuse homage to his vast intelligence.
But let us speak, ah first, of the physical appearance of
L30 XIII. His height, the supreme distinction of his
entire person, his countenance at once energetic and mild,,
his spiritual and delicately-drawn lips, his hands so
thoroughly aristocratic, his deep but melodious voice, and
above all, those eyes so full of youth, life, and will ; in fine,
a very unique combination makes the wonderful Pontiff
the most completely interesting model that an artist could
desire. You will easily understand how I was moved in
the presence of this venerable man whom I regard as the
most ideal personage of his century, when to my descrip-
tion you add what others can portray with better effect— the
immense influence exercised by Leo XIII. over the men
of his day, and especially over those who approach him.

. . . The intense admiration which I had already felt was

(1) M Effigicm mbjectam oculis , quis diccrc falmm

Audeat 7 Huic similem vix jam pinxUwet Apelles.”

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changed, now that I was admitted to an intimacy with His
Holiness, to veritable worship ; I was captured, as to eyes,
and as to heart To the joy of being able to study this
entrancing physiognomy at my ease, was now added the
still greater joy of hearing, during long hours at a time,
the Pontiff s warm and vibrating tones — the joy of listening to
some of his innermost thoughts, and to some of the grand
projects conceived in that powerful brain. I would like to
say much more, and I could do so ; but I fear that I might
not express my feelings well, and that I might say too
much ” (1). The picture drawn by Justin McCarthy is
even more interesting than that presented by the French
artist ; for the Irish writer is not only a sincere Catholic
layman like Chartran, but he is also more of the man of the
world : “ Pope Leo XIII. is a man of a singularly grace-
ful and imposing presence. He is generally described as
very tall, but his slender form gives him the appearance of
being much taller than he really is. He is a man not much
above the middle height, but very slight and stately. His
face is as bloodless as that of a marble statue. He dresses
in white, and the white of his robes is only of a different
tone from the pallor of his face. Many a visitor to Home
has been reminded, when seeing him, of the late Cardinal
Manning, whom we all knew, and whom everybody who
really knew, respected, revered, and loved. Even now,
despite his advanced years, the Pope moves with a quick
and easy tread, which has no suggestion of creeping old
age about it. His feet glide easily along the floor, and lift
easily from the floor. He enters readily and simply into
conversation, and has the native-born sympathy which
enables him to come at once into a cordial and thorough
understanding with his visitors. It can hardly be neces-
sary to say that he is brought into constant communication
with men and women from all parts of the world ; and I
have never heard of any one who did not go away impressed
with his geniality and his graciousness. Among the many
commanding figures in the Europe of our days, his is one of
ihe most commanding. I have seen a good many great

(1) Letter to Boyer d’Affen, April 11, 1092.

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men in my time. I have been acquainted with Gladstone,
.and I have talked with Bismarck, and with Cardinal New-
man ; and I can recall to memory the presence of the
Emperor Nicholas of Russia, and I knew Charles Sumner,
the great American orator and abolitionist, and I have often
seen and heard M. Berryer, and the late Prince Consort.
But no picture has impressed me more than that of Pope
Leo XIII. I remember well a conversation I had with
the late Cardinal Manning, many years ago, and before I
had the privilege of being able to call him my friend, when
he looked back upon the early days of England, and talked
in his sweet, regretful, and dreamy way of the time ‘ when
saints yet trod the soil of England.’ I do not expect any
English Protestant to accept the views of Cardinal Manning,
but an English Protestant may yet feel touched to reverence
even by views which he does not accept as his own. I
^always think of Leo XIIL as one of those figures which
must have been more often seen in the days when saints
walked the earth — as, indeed, some saints do walk the earth
even now.”

CHAPTER VII.

POPE LEO XIIL AND THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have already shown thaft the Third French Republic will
be described by future historians as having merited a promi-
nent mention among the more virulent of the innumerable
persecutors of the Church. Now we shall devote some space
to the manner in which Leo XIII. endeavored to solve the
politico-religious questions which necessarily agitated the
Catholics of France, as they found themselves confronted by
their naturally royalist predilections, and at the same time
by an evident necessity of procuring peace for the French
Church. Commenting on the position assumed by our Pon-
tiff on the social question in general, and on the political
question in France, an eminent writer whom Catholics do
not claim as their own, Melchior de Vogue, thus describes

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what he would regard as adventurous daring on the part of
a Chief Pastor of the Homan Church : “ Think of the
amount of decision that he must have possessed. Think of
the crushing pressure which his habitual clientele must have
exerted, in order to make him continue to act what seemed
to be the necessary role of a Head of the Church — the part
of a chaplain of a cemetery, appointed to the pious guardian-
ship of political tombs in the shadow of the sanctuary.
When he was eighty years of age, Leo XIII. issued forth
from that cemetery ; he threw himself into the world of the
living, in order to combat adversaries who thought that their
ownership of the world could not be challenged. He had
appreciated the words of his Master : * Let the dead bury

their dead ! ’. . . Nothing will cause him to hesitate. The
manifestations of his idea succeed each other with a pro-
gressive increase of vigor, and with a lucidity which,
considering his great age, confound us. In his Encyclical
on the condition of the working-classes, of course, he has
not solved the social problem — who will solve it? — but he
has explained it more precisely than it has ever been
explained, and he has frankly espoused the cause of the
weak. And in the same spirit, in his Encyclical to the
Catholics of France, he approached the political problems
with as much practical moderation as doctrinal hardihood ” (1).
Having made all due allowances for certain absurdities so^
apodictically enunciated by M. de Yogiie, we may say that
his picture of Leo XIII., as the Pontiff advised the Catholics
of France to “ rally ” around the flag of the Eepublic, was
that which presented itself to the most judicious minds, not
only of France, but of the entire Catholic world. The sole
object of Leo XIII., when he counselled the French Catholics
to accept the Republic, was to secure the true interests of
religion ; but his endeavors were more or less opposed by
two very different classes of Catholics. In the first place,
there were still in France many royalists of that stamp
which the reader has probably regarded as peculiar to the
old families of the Faubourg Saint-Germain ; and these
traditional servants of the monarchy of Clovis and St Louis,.

(i) Cited by T’Serclaes, loc. cit. . Vol. ii., p. 310.

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC. 205

•wliose religion and whose royalism seemed to be the same
thing, or at least inseparably united, could not for a moment
conceive the possibility of an unchristian French monarchy,
or of any religious condition of affairs which would not be
firmly based on royalty. To these noble relics of an age
long vanished, the Pontiff said : “ Preserve your admirable
fidelity to the legitimate monarchy, if you will ; but do not
impede the paramount interests of religion by a political
attitude which I believe to bo destructive of those interests.”
Then there was another class of Catholics, whose acquain-
tance we made when we treated of Gallicanism, and of the
relations between Louis XIV. and the Holy See — politicians
who were almost as un-Catholic as the Febronians of Ger-
many ; that is, men who were impregnated with Regalism
And with a Liberalism of their own manufacture ; men who
willingly relegated religion to a rank inferior to that in
which they placed the government of their preference. To
these gentry Leo XHI. said : “ Remember that religion can
be the obsequious servant of no human being or institution.
Feign no longer to speak in her noble name. Assume not to
defend her with weapons which disgrace her, only to exalt
yourselves.” Of course there was a third and less prominent
sort of Catholics, composed of persons whose practice, if not
whose theories, was a mixture of those of the other classes.
Some time before our Pontiff essayed to unite these classes
into a strong party for the defence of religion, the Count de
Mun, then deputy for Morbihan, took the first step in that
direction when he thus defined the duties of his Catholic
compatriots in the circumstances of the day : “ We must

defend the indubitable rights of the Church, and her neces-
sary liberties. . . we must cast into utter oblivion the wretched
men who have outraged all our religious sentiments, and
who have made a war on God the object of their policy. . . .
No other ground, at least in my mind, is so appropriate for
the union of all good citizens ; no other ground offers, either
a more just cause, or more legitimate weapons, or a better
chance of success.” And then he summoned all Catholics to
“ raise the banner of the Cross ” (1). The impressions pro-

(1) Letter to Admiral Giquel des Touches, Sept. 6, 1885.

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8TUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

duced by this initiative were thus indicated by V Univers r
“ The openly religious journals have saluted the letter with
joy ; the hostile ones have replied with violent attacks
certain others have organized a conspiracy of silence ” (1).
The Osservatore Romano , then a semi-official organ of the
Pohtiff, applauded “the courageous endeavor to procure
the salvation of France by making religion the basis of
the labor which will be needed in order to raise the
country from the degradation to which the Revolution
has reduced it.” After the elections of Oct. 5, in which
the Catholics gained many seats in the Legislature, Count
de Mun made another appeal to his co-religionists, inviting
them “ to march in the advance-guard with renewed energy
and unity. The Catholic party will thus be formed on the
field of battle, and on the day after the fight we shall be able
to organize it, and make of it a rampart for social order ” (2).
This hint that the Catholic party might soon be an indepen-
dent organization, and not a mere auxiliary of the Conserva-
tive forces, caused several of the royalist leaders to oppose
the Count de Mun as endangering their cause ; but the
accessions to his ranks more than counterbalanced the
defections. However, the political disunion among the
Catholics was increased. The Count de Mun had pro-
claimed that his party would agitate for freedom of worship
and of Catholic teaching ; and that its social programme
would insist on a revision of the testamentary laws, upon a
legal amelioration of the lot of the workingman, and on a
revival of the olden corporations or mediaeval trades-unions.

“ In order to carry out this programme,” said the count,

“ we must form a compact and powerful party, which
wrill have its authorized representatives in Parliament.”
Out of * 77 important Catholic and Conservative journals,
35, w ith L1 Univers and La Croix at their head, favored
the Count de Mun ; but 42, headed by Le Monde , op-
posed the formation of a distinct Catholic party. Most
of the French bishops preserved silence in the matter; but
several, among whom the most loud-spoken were Freppel of
Angers, and Thibaudier of Soissons, reproved the new leader

(1) Oct. 3, 188o. (2) Letter to the Untvcr* , Oct. 11, J885.

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC. 207

as though he desired “ to fasten the cause of the Church to*
that of an earthly monarchy” — a thing which the count
combatted with every force of his soul, and which Freppel
and his friends, albeit quite unconsciously, were certainly
promoting. Great was the surprise of both factions of the
Catholic party, when, on Nov. 9, little more than a month
after his announcement of his great ambition, Count de Mun
sent to the press a declaration that “ in order not to cause a
division among the Catholics, he renounced the project of
the organization which he had meditated.” It was generally
understood, both in Rome and in France, that the sole reason
for this action was an expression of a wish, on the part
of Leo XIII., that for the moment the controversy among the
Catholics should cease. The Pontiff himself was consider-
ing the details of a project for political unity among all the
honest men of France ; and in the meantime, the good cause
could only be injured by acrimonious discussions, such as
too many editors and pamphleteers were fomenting. The
plan which Leo XIII. was excogitating differed very not-
ably from that of Count de Mun. In the first place, Count
de Mun always avowed himself an ardent royalist ; and
although he desired that the Catholic party should be
independent, he intended that it should be an ally of the
Conservative and dynastic forces. Leo XIII., on the con-
trary, was to ask all honest Frenchmen to unite, without any
royalist preoccupations, in an acceptance of the constituted
Third Republic. Secondly, Count de Mun considered in his
programme many social questions, which, however minutely
and exhaustively the Pontiff may have treated them else-
where, he did not touch in any of his appeals to the French
on the matter of their political duties. The opposition
experienced by Count de Mun showed Leo XIII. that the
valiant successor of Montalembert had undertaken a task
which was above the forces of any layman ; it remained to be
seen whether the Supreme Pastor could conquer the obstacles
which impeded the great design. The first clear indication
of the wishes of Leo XIII. in this matter was furnished
by the famous toast pronounced by Cardinal Lavigerie at a
banquet given to the officers of the French fleet then in the

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STUDIES m CHURCH HISTORY.

harbor of Algiers, on Nov. 12, 1890. This toast, followed
by the Marseillaise , played by the White Fathers, whom the
cardinal had founded for the extirpation of African slavery,
produced consternation in the ranks of the royalists. We
subjoin some of the salient passages of this discourse : “ In
the presence of that past which still bleeds, and of the
future which ever threatens, our great need is unity ; and
allow me to tell you that unity is the sincere wish of the
Church, and of all her pastors in every grade of the hier-
archy. Undoubtedly the Church does not ask us to renounce
either the souvenirs of a glorious past, or those sentiments
of fidelity and of gratitude which honor all men. But when
the will of a people is clearly affirmed ; when in the form of
a government there is nothing — as Leo XIII. has recently
proclaimed — which is opposed to the principles which alone
•can give life to Christian and civilized nations ; when, in order,
to save one’s country from the abyss which yawns before
her, it is necessary to adhere conscientiously to her form
of government ; then the moment has arrived for the sacrifice
of all that honor permits one to sacrifice. ... It would be
folly to hope to support the columns of an edifice, without
entering into the edifice itself, were it only to prevent the
would-be destroyers from completing their work of madness.”
Two days after he had fired his bombshell, the cardinal sent
to each one of his clergy a copy of his speech ; and in the
accompanying letter, he alluded to certain instructions of Leo
XIII. concerning the participation of Catholics in public
affairs, and drew this conclusion : “ It is the duty of
Catholics, and conducive to their honor, not to allow the
present situation of the Church, in France to be prolonged ;
and for the fulfilment of that duty there is but one practical
means, the course advised by the Sovereign Pontiff — to take
part resolutely in public affairs, not as adversaries of the
established government, but, on the contrary, as claimants
of all the rights of citizenship in the republic which governs
us. This adhesion ought to be a work of resignation, of
reason, and for us Catholics, after the formal instructions
which I have cited, a work of conscience.” The storm
excited by these words of Cardinal Lavigerie, a prelate so

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toPE LEO XIII. AND THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC. 209

universally admired and revered, impelled several French
bishops to write to the Holy See, in the hope of discovering
whether or not His Eminence had voiced the sentiments of
the Holy Father ; and when Cardinal Rampolla had sent an
apposite letter to the bishop of Saint-Flour, His Eminence
of Algiers forwarded to each of his clergy a circular, in
which we read the following recommendations : “ The Holy
Father has officially undertaken the work already begun ;
he has entered upon it in the letter from His Eminence,
Cardinal Rampolla, which I have sent to you, and in which
you must have perceived three principal points, on which I
myself have reflected on several occasions. The first is the
reiterated affirmation that the Church is hostile to no
particular form of government. The second is the advice to
Catholics, considered as such, to separate their political
cause and political actions from those of the old parties.
The third is the advice given to Catholics to unite closely
on the ground of their religious interests, simply for the
vigorous defence of those interests.” Shortly after the
issuance of this circular, Lavigerie received from the Pope
a Brief, dated Feb. 9, 1892 ; and it so formally approved
of the cardinal's course, that His Eminence deemed it proper
to communicate it also to his clergy. The Pontiff had
Assured the cardinal that all that His Eminence had done in
the premises had corresponded perfectly with the needs of the
time, and with the tokens of his devotion to the Apostolic
See (1). Among the adhesions to the policy enunciated
by Lavigerie, that of Mgr. Isoard is noteworthy as containing
a protest against the assumption of the Radicals that Radi-
calism and the French Republic must necessarily be syn-
onymous terms. “ You are not the Republic,” apostrophized
the bishop of Annecy ; “ you are not France. You are not
masters, and we are not subjects. We ask nothing of you ;
we ask not to communicate with you ; we have no need of
you. The constitution of every republican State gives to
everyone of its citizens the right of place on its soil ; and
we take our place. If we did not take that place long ago,

(1) “ Studia ct offlcia i a . . . uptime congruelxint rationi temporis , expectationi
nostrcE, ct aUis qua* jam didcras testimoniis de egregia tua erga nos voluntate .”

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it was because many Conservatives and many Catholics
deemed it better to attempt the impossible task of changing
the form of government” Very many of the French bishops*
however, refused to follow the initiative of His Eminence of
Algiers ; and the bishop of Bayeux, in a pastoral to his
people, thus described the variations in episcopal opinion :
“ These differences turn on no point of doctrine, but merely
on the manner of regarding a particular political situation.
All the bishops perceive the peril now menacing France ;
all denounce the sect which persecutes Christianity ; all
proclaim that the present question is more important than
any merely political question. In fact, the question is :
shall France remain Christian ? All the bishops reject the
idea that the Church is necessarily attached to any one form
of government, and that she naturally anathematizes all
other forms. All the bishops agree concerning the strict
obligation of all Catholics- to unite for the defence of their
religion ; but here, and here alone, there is a diversity of
opinion, some of the bishops holding that without abjuring
their past, and without abandoning their hopes, the Catholics
may unite for the defence of religion under the direction of
the bishops, subordinating their particular sympathies to
the superior interests of the defence incumbent on them.
Others, however, believe that these superior interests require
a loyal adhesion to the present government. . . .As for my-
self, I think that the Church would compromise her ministry,
were she to identify herself with either a monarchical or a
republican policy.” While the bishops and the leaders of the
Catholic laity were debating, they should have remembered the
adage, Fas est et ah haste doeeri. The Brethren of the Three
Points plainly manifested their fear lest the Catholics should
shake off their political lethargy, and become the determining
factor in the government of the French State ; for nothing is
more certain than the imminent ruin of Masonic domination in
that State, whenever the Catholics of France furnish a unitec)
parliamentary phalanx for the defence of civil and religious
liberty. In a discourse at Vic de Bigorre delivered on April
20, 1891, Jules Ferry said : “ The evolut: ^>n of the Catholic
party cannot be regarded with disdain ; i that evolution ie

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POPE LEO xni. AND THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC. 211

well managed, and if there is sufficient intelligence to follow it
out, it may become a very redoubtable engine of war.” In
the Masonic “ convent ” of 1891, M. Thulie, President of the
Council in the Grand Orient of France, perorated in this
fashion : “ It is certain that Clericalism is trying to plant its
standard in our camp, in order to more easily throttle
the Republic ; but, just as we did in 1877 and 1889, we Free-
masons will rise in a body, crying : ‘ We are here, and you
shall go no further ! * Brethren, I drink to the Assembly
which has so well replied to the hypocritical attempts of
the Clericals to invade our Republic.” On the same occasion,
Brother de Serres reminded the adepts of the words of the
cold-blooded Brisson : “ Our worst enemies are. not the most
Clerical of the journals, but rather such journals as Le
Temps and the Journal des Debats , who have masked as
republicans for a long time.” Masonry, therefore, feared a
coalition of the honest men of France ; but, nevertheless,
no less a personage than the Count d’Haussonville, head of
the “ royalist group,” emitted at Nimes, on Feb. 8, 1891, the
following declaration : “ Let us not be afraid, gentlemen, to

use exact language. France desires a king ; a king alone can
peacefully restore France to her proper place in Europe. . . .
It is to this complement of her destiny, or rather # to this,
return of her prosperity, that France aspires ; and it is be-
cause she has a confused idea that the Republic will never
give this blessing to her, that she is now a prey to miser-
able prognostications.” And on July 19, the same Catholic
champion insisted that a “ determined resistance ” should
be opposed in the electoral field to all the Catholic republican
candidates, although, of course, the simple Catholic ch^o'w,
dates should be sustained. In this emergency, the ^ trans-
official Osservatore Romano took occasion, while addJianges
M. de Cassagnac, the leader of the Catholic imperialhtailed
also rebuke the school of* Count d’Haussonville: "cessity
Cassagnac should remember that sincere defenders necessity
ion ought not mix religious interests with those cent, lei
party ; they should not make use of religion in order 'red as
pose systematically the existing government. True Catfod, it
know that in matters of this kind they owe complete sthis

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

mission to the Sovereign Pontiff and his representatives,
especially in regard to the relations between the Church and
the State — relations which, in France, are regulated by the
Concordat. We trust that M. de Cassagnac will reflect on
the fatal consequences of his published theories.” Such
advice might naturally have produced unimportant results ;
but greater promise of French Catholic harmony was given
when tlieJive cardinals of France, on Jan. 16, 1892, after a
vivid arraignment of the Third Republic at the bar of his-
tory and of common justice (1), counselled the French Catho-
lics “ to terminate their political dissensions, and planting
themselves squarely on constitutional ground, to look espe-
cially to the defence of their threatened faith. . . to accept
frankly and loyally the political institutions them in vigor,
while resisting, at the same time, every usurpation
of the secular over the spiritual power .... to be faithful
to their electoral duties, the fulfilment of which by all
honest men would secure a national representation which
would legislate for the reforms so necessary for public
tranquillity.” Sixty-six bishops endorsed this document ;
but even then the desired political union of the French
Catholics was not effected. The time for a Pontifical inter-
vention had come ; and on Feb. 16, 1892, Leo XIII. issued
his Encyclical to the French people, a document which
many have regarded as signalizing an embrace of Democ-
racy on the part of the Holy See, finally disgusted with the
monarchs of the earth, but which others, and probably with

(1) The following were the complaints of the Church against the Third Republic, as
-enumerated by the flve cardinals. The abrogation of the laws allowing public prayers and
"eouraging the observance of the Lord's Day. The banishment of the crucifix from the
acia^, The prohibition, given to the soldiers, to attend religious services in a body.
Points*1®8 thrown in the way of the bishops, in the matter of their relations with the
, , and in the matter of ecclesiastical nominations. The new jurisprudence which

SiiaKe q the »• marriage ” of priests. The suppression of the revenues of canons, and of
factor y ▼•cars : and the progressive reduction of the entire ecclesiastical budget. The
' fines which deprived the clergy of the greater part of their miserable subsidy,
.more C«us civil administration of vacant dioceses. The expulsion of religious from their
that Stand ,n W® cases of exempted convents, such exceptional and tyrannous taxes as
, . ntailed the death of the communities. The banishment of religion from the
parliani* of the Universities. The laicization of the primary schools, including the
liberty °^entrance toany pr,e8t’ and th® exclusion of any catechetical Instruction,
on i ^ -cession of all scholarships in the seminaries. The enforced enlistment of sera-
in the army. The abolition of military chaplaincies. The laws favoring divorce.
par ’eculaiizat,on °* a11 hosP,tals- Innumerable difficulties thrown in the way of persons
1 desired to leave money for pious purposes.

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* POPE LEO im. AND THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC. 213

better reason, have considered as destined to be a cause of an
eventual return to her historic paths, on the part of France-
The Encyclical began with an assurance of the continual
and pre-eminent love of the Pontiffs for the people of France ;
and then the Pope asserted the principle that religion must
be the necessary foundation of all social stability. His
Holiness then refuted the calumny .that attributes to the
Pontiffs “ a desire to obtain a political domination over the
State ” — a calumny which was advanced even in the case of
the Divine Founder of the Church. The struggle which the
Church is now called to sustain, said the Pope, is the same
as it ever has been, “ and it is scarcely modified, even in
form.” In order to defend the cause of the Church, “ close
union is necessary ” ; and the French were informed that
here His Holiness alluded to “ the political differences
among them concerning their proper attitude toward the
existing Republic.” Every form of government, insisted
the Pope, is good, providing it conduces to the public weal >
but “ Catholics, like all other citizens, are at full liberty to
prefer one form of government to another, precisely because
none of these forms are opposed to the dictates of sound
reason, or to the maxims of Christian doctrine.” Coming
then to the domain of facts, Leo XIII. remarked that while
principles never change, “ they frequently assume a charac-
ter of contingency, being affected by the circumstances in
which they are applied ” ; and the French were asked to
remember that “ whatever may be the form of government
in a nation, it cannot be considered as so definitive, that it
can never be changed ” ; the Church alone enjoys the privi-
lege of immutability in her constitution, whereas we know,
concerning human organizations, that “ time, the great trans-
former of all things here below, works radical changes
in their institutions.” When such changes have entailed
anarchy or other disorder on a nation, “ social necessity
compels that nation to provide for itself ; and this necessity
justifies the creation and existence of a new government, lei
its form be what you will.” The civil power, considered as
such, is from God ( 1 Bom ., X///., 1) ; and once established, it
is permitted, and may be necessary, to accept it,” and this

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STUDIES m CHURCH HISTORY.

great duty of respect and of dependence will be obligatory,
so long as the public weal demands its fulfilment, because
the common good is, after God, the first and last law of
society.” These principles, continued the Pope, explain
the wisdom of the Church, when she maintained relations
with each of the many governments which have been estab-
lished in France during the last hundred years; “ this atti-
tude of the Church forms the safest guide for the conduct of
French Catholics in their civil relations with the Republic,
the existing government of their nation. Let them banish
the political dissensions now weakening them ; let them use
all their energies for the restoration of the moral grandeur of
their country ! ” His Holiness assured the French that he
did not forget the anti-Christian character of the Third
Republic ; but it was precisely because of the iniquity of
their present rulers, that “ putting an end to all dissensions,
all honest men should unite in order to combat, by every
legal and proper means, the progressive abuses of their
Legislature.” The Pontiff terminated his Encyclical with
the wish that “ his words might dissipate the prejudices of
many men of good faith ; and that they might facilitate
a pacification which would end in a perfect union of all the
French Catholics, so that they would defend successfully
the cause of ‘ Christ ivho loves the French ' ” In his anxiety
to seminate his ideas, if possible, at every fireside in France,
Leo XIII. took the unprecedented course, on the part of a
Roman Pontiff, of allowing himself to be “ interviewed for
publication ” by an editor of the Petit Journal , not a
Catholic paper, but the one possessing the largest circula-
tion in the world ; and by such a proceeding our Pontiff,
far from demeaning himself by adopting the chief weapon
of the day in order to serve humanity, acted just as St.
Gregory VII., Innocent III., or Sixtus V., would have acted,
had they lived in our days (1). Leo XIII. thus popularized,

(1) This interview was held shortly before the appearance of the Encyclical, and was
published at the time when that document was first read in France. It may be regarded
as a kind of commentary by the illustrious author himself. The editor of the Petit
Journal guaranteed the absolute authenticity of the detailed con vers ition, both as to
substance and as to form. It ran as follows: Editor: “We would be grateful. Holy
Father. If you would inform us as to whether the continuous eflTorts of the Holy See for a
settlement of our constitutional disputes have any relation with the views of Tour Holiness

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POPE LEO xra. AND THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC. 215

so to speak, the important Encyclical in places where such
documents seldom or never entered. All the French bishops,
either explicitly or tacitly, accepted the counsels of Leo
XIII. ; and when some of the recalcitrant royalists insisted
that if Mgr. Freppel were still alive (he had died in 1891),
he would have kept aloft the standard of the Lilies in defiance
of Rome, Mgr. Sauve, one of the best theologians in France,
an ardent legitimist, and an intimate friend of the late bishop
of Angers, wrote a defence of the prelate, which he termi-
nated with these words : “I have no doubt whatever that if
the late Mon&eigneur of Angers were with us to-day, he
would be in line with all the bishops of France, and that,

in regard to the external affairs of our country ; whether, that is, Your Holiness
wishes to assist in the work of all our patriots, the strengthening of France.” Pope ;

My desire, like the wish of the Church, is for the happiness of France. France is a
nation with a vivid spirit and a generous character. If sometimes she does not follow the
right road, the one most conducive to her true interests, she quickly repairs her error,
when she learns the truth. I greatly desire, and I do so consistently, in spite of all oppo-
sition. that dissensions disappear in France, and that there may be among you nothing
which will foster weak ness. I believe that all French citizens should unite, although each
may preserve his private preferences ; but in the domain of action, there should be an eye
only for the government which France has given to herself. The republican form of
government is as legitimate as any other. I lately received the president of the Committee
on Organization of the World’s Fair in Chicago, who requested the co-operation of the
Holy 8ee in that great American enterprise. Now, the United 8tates of North America
are a republic, and in spite of the inconveniences inseparable from unlimited liberty, they
grow ^eater every day, and the Catholic Church has developed there, without any contests
with the State. There the Church and the State agree well, just as they should agree
everywhere, neither encroaching on the rights of the other. There liberty is the founda-
tion of the relations between the civil power and the religious conscience. Everywhere
the Church asks for liberty, before anything else. Let my authoritative voice be correctly
understood, so that my objects and my attitude may not be travestied. Whatever the
Church enjoys in the United States, she ought to enjoy, with much more reason, in republican
France. I talk in this same fashion to all Frenchmen who come to see me ; I want them all
to know my real sentiments. I regret that certain highly-placed personages have not yet
dared to publish, as they ought to have done, the efforts which I have made for the peace
and prosperity of your noble nation, the nation ever regarded by me as the Eldest Daugh-
ter of the Church. I shall persist in this course, and I shall encourage all who enter on it.
It is in order to facilitate this task that the Church should attend to her veritable mission, the
moralizing of souls, the indoctrinating of them with a spirit of sacrifice and of devotedness.
At the same time, she interests herself in the condition of the weak ; my declaration con-
cerning the rights of the working classes ought to render more easy the internal pacification
of France, by reducing to a small minority the number of those who have no other pre-
occupation than to trouble minds, and to impede the union of their countrymen— a union
without which France cannot accomplish her grand destinies. It is by means of the solid
internal constitution which I desire for France, that in spite of her enemies, she will fully
regain her olden pre-eminence. I am pleased to learn that France earnestly desires peace*
in spite of her enormous military resources, and of the grand courage of her sons. If
she ooutinues unfalteringly to cherish this wisdom and this patience ; if she knows bow to
banish the dissensions which arrest her development and paralyze her Influence ; if she
decides to abandon entirely the works of chicanery and of persecution ; she wMl soon
re -occupy the glorious place in the world whieh once was her own.”

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

docile to the voice of Leo XIII., he would exclaim : ‘Rome
lias Spoken ; the cause is finished.’ And I dare to assert
that he would use his great influence with the Count of
Paris and his partisans to determine them to follow the
counsels of the Holy Father.” In the commentary on the
Encyclical which Mgr. Sauve published at this time, he
indicated, for the benefit of all the ultra-royalists who
misinterpreted the real significance of our Pontiffs advice,
what was to be his own course, as an unflinching legitimist
md an uncompromising Catholic. Having promised that he
would not admit the intrinsic legitimacy of the Third Repub-
lic, he pledged himself “to abandon all attempts for a
monarchical restoration ; to undertake no royalist prop-
aganda ; to not only renounce all illegal acts detrimental to
the existence of the Republic, but to abstain, out of religious
deference to the desire of the Pope, from even any legal
enterprises which might procure the substitution of the
monarchical for the republican form of government.” Such,
and perhaps a smaller one, was the sacrifice which Leo XTTL
demanded from the French royalists.

CHAPTER VIEL

POPE LEO xm. AND THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT IN IRELAND.

Although the reader is probably conversant with the
general features of the subject, and although he must know
that Leo XIII. did not condemn the Land League and the
principle of Home Rule, as was asserted by the entire
Masonic press, and by all the foes of Irish liberty, we propose
to consider briefly the reason for the Pontiffs intervention
in the political affairs of Ireland, and the nature of that
intervention. Probably the most satisfactory commentary
on this intervention is that given by Justin McCarthy in his
short but admirable biography of the Pontiff ; and for the
benefit of those who have not read that work, we subjoin
some passages which will illustrate our subject (1). Our

(1) “ The condition of Ireland was, indeed, beginning to command the attention of the

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT IN IRELAND. 217

purpose is to bring into bolder relief certain features which
Mr. McCarthy has left in shadow. The Land League,
formed in 1879 for the purpose of procuring a reduction of
farm-rents in Ireland, and for a facilitation of an acquirement
of freeholds on the part of the tenants, had for its most practi-
cal and immediately-resulting feature the fact that when a ten-
ant was unjustly threatened with ejectment, he was sustained
by all the other members of the League. A very slight ac-
quaintance with Irish history will prevent any sane mind from
feeling surprise at the sympathy extended by the immense
mass of the Irish clergy, following the initiative of the
archbishop of Cashel, to the new patriotic movement.
Scarcely a year, however, had elapsed since the foundation
of the League, when the violence of a considerable section
of the Irish press, an extravagant development of the ever-to-
be-remembered system of “ Boycotting,” and numerous out-
rages on the part of a mysterious society of “ Moonlighters,”
gave to the Parnellite engine so ultra-revolutionary an aspect,

whole civilized world ; and it need hardly be said that the sympathy between the Papacy
and the Irish Catholics bad been close and constant for generations and for centuries.'
There were two great agitations going on In Ireland— one political, and one agrarian— but
the two working together, and forming between them a complete national movement.
The political movement was for Home Rule; the agrarian movement was. roughly speak*
log, for the abolition of despotic landlordism, and the creation of a peasant proprietary all

over Ireland The Pope did at last intervene— not directly, and not by way of any

Papal fulmination ; but the Vatican decidedly issued an opinion and a warning to the Irish
people on the national movement, the political and the agrarian ; and the intervention
was received with a chorus of applause from the landlord class, and the Conservatives
and the antl-Natlonalists of Ireland. The counsellors of the Pope naturally relied a good
deal upon the representations and the advice of the English Catholics. Now the English
Catholics belong almost always to the higher classes In social life. They belong for the
mest part to the landlord order, and their sympathies would naturally go with the claims
of their own order. Then, again, the English Catholics, as a rule, have no sympathy with
the Irish national cause— the cause of Home Rule, I do not mean to say that this is true
of all the English Catholics. I know far too well for that I know that the sympathies of
men like Lord Ripon, and Lord Acton, and Lord Ash burn ham, and many of the most
distinguished of the English Catholic priesthood, are cordially with the principle of national
self-government for Ireland. But, as a rule, neither the cause of the political reforms
which Ireland claims, nor that of the agrarian reforms which Ireland has so long needed,
can be said to have the sympathy of the English Catholics. Now It is in the very nature of
things that a good deal of the ideas of the English Catholics must have made a way Into
the councils of those who advised Pope Leo. For a long time, too, the Archbishopric of
Dublin had been in the bands of men like Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal MacCabe— good
men, pious men, learned men ; but men who shrank In alarm from any agitation that
seemed likely to be troublesome, and who were apt to hear the first thunder of approaching
revolution in every rising sound of popular agitation. It must be owned that Ireland was
passing through something very like a national revolution .... No doubt some wild things
were said on national platforms, and in the terrible death-struggle between the landlords

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

that Pope Leo XIII. deemed it wise to address a warning
letter to Archbishop MacCabe of Dublin. This salutary
caution, dated Jan. 3, 1881, began with the recognition of the
deplorable condition of the great mass of the Irish people, a
state of affairs which had endured for centuries, but which, as
a rule, the Irish had borne with exemplary patience, sustained
by their invincible constancy in the Faith. The Pontiff
reminded the archbishop, and through him the Irish nation,
that during the long course of its terrible sufferings, his
predecessors had never ceased to warn it not to depart from
the paths of moderation and justice, even when those suffer-
ings appeared to justify revolution ; and he besought the
bishops of Ireland to restrain their flocks within the bounds
of legality, since it was evident that within those bounds
the Irish cause would ultimately conquer, with the least
possible additional misery for the people. The Irish bishops
communicated and explained the pontifical letter to their
diocesans ; and in a meeting held at Maynooth, they drew the
attention of the people, but especially of the English Govern-
%

and the tenants some wild deeds were done on both sides. If tbe tenants bad no just
claim in wbat they demanded, then It has to be pointed out that every recent Government.
Liberal or Tory, has abetted them since in their unjust demands; for every Government
has yielded more and more to their claim, and has proclaimed that each subsequent con-
cession was a concession to the cause of justice and of order. The truth had at last begun
to be officially recognized, which John Stuart Mill preached in vain thirty years before, when
he insisted that the Irish land-tenure system was entirely exceptional and apart, and such as
no civilized Icgislatitm. except that of Englaml. would tolerate — There had always been
an agrarian agitation in modern Ireland; but up to tbe formation of the Land League it was
crude, unorganized, sporadic, spasmodic— each locality, each group of tenantry, acting for
Itself, upon its own Impulse, and by its own ways. Tbe effort and the purpose of tbe
Land League was to consolidate all tbe agrarian agitation of Ireland into one system,
acting under directions from headquarters. Such a movement, under the guidance of
men like those who directed it, might be trusted to be a check on disorder and crime : not
a stimulant to disorder and crime. But it is easy to understand that, to observers at a
distance, it may have seemed at first — as it did seem Indeed to some observers close at band
—the methodising and embattling of all the forces of agrarian revolution. It was in
reality a strike of the tenantry against an Intolerable system. To the counsellors of the
Vatican it seemed, as at one time it seemed to Mr. Gladstone, a rebellion against tbe most
sacred principles of social law. The Vatican intervened, and Mr. Gladstone also inter-
vened— To the advisers of the Pope it undoubtedly appeared that they were only uttering a
much needed appeal in favor of law and order, social and moral. To tbe majority of the
Irish Nationalists it seemed that tbe Vatican had come to the help of Mr. Gladstone and of
the English Government in tbe effort to stamp out a great national and patriotic agitation.
At that time Mr. Gladstone bad not become fully acquainted with tbe realities of Ireland's
condition and of Ireland’s needs. No one can doubt— no calm observer among Irish
Nationalists ever doubt— the absolute good faith and sympathy of the advice which
the Vatican gave to Ireland. To the authorities in the Papal Court , nothing thatcould

happen to Ireland seemed so terrible as that Ireland should commit crime.1'

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POPE LEO XIII. AND THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT IN IRELAND. 219

ment (which had drawn great comfort from the document), to
that part of the letter which expressly avowed that the Irish
grievances were entirely legitimate. The prelates insisted,
before the world, that the land laws of Ireland created and
fostered a continual danger for peace ; and they declared
that reformative legislation alone would restore order. In
their reply to His Holiness, they thanked the Holy See for
the letter to His Grace of Dublin, and they declared that
they shared the pontifical grief for the few violences which
compromised the cause of a people who were clamoring for
their rights. But they besought the Holy Father not to
give implicit credit to the interested reports of these violences
which were circulated by the organs of the oppressor.
During the stress of difficulties caused by the “ Act of
Coercion,” introduced in parliament by Gladstone, and tyran-
nically applied by Forster, the attitude of the Irish clergy
was, as moderate as the Pontiff could have desired ; and His
Holiness expressed his satisfaction by enrolling Archbishop
MacCabe in the Sacred College on March 27, 1882. But the
Land Act of 1881 had proved to be almost entirely nugatory ;
for in the year which followed its application, there were
17,341 evictions, and consequently a large increase of agrarian
outrages. Therefore our Pontiff wrote another letter, under
date of Aug. 1, 1882, in which he declared that the condition
of the Irish people gave him “ more anxiety than consola-
tion,” because of the continuous miseries of the island, and
because of the consequent and frequent abandonment of many
to the dictates of unreasoning passion, “ as though it were
possible for a hope of public happiness to be found in dis-
honor and crime.” The Irish had a perfect right, said His
Holiness, to struggle for their rights ; “ we cannot suppose
that what is granted to all other peoples should be denied to
the Irish ; but they should remember that the useful is subject
to the laws of justice, and that it is shameful to defend even
the most just of causes with unjust means.” It is not surpris-
ing that this pontifical letter was almost barren of results
among a people who were then groaning under the goad of the
Coercion Act, and who had just seen Parnell and their other
xhief champions shut up in Kilmainham JaiL Their zeal

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220 .

STUDIES m CHURCH HISTORY.

in subscribing to the “Parnell Testimonial Fund,” designed
to defray the expenses of the defence of their leader in his
forthcoming trial, did not diminish; nor would the Holy See
have wished it to grow less, had the original object not soon
included the provision — secret, but no less evident — of a
fund wherewith to produce and sustain an open “ rebellion.”
In consequence of this apprehension, the Cardinal-Prefect of
the Propaganda addressed a circular, on May 11, 1883, to
all the Irish bishops, prohibiting the priests from taking
any part in the subscription ; but taking care to subjoin : “ It
is perfectly proper for the Irish to try to better their miser-
able lot ; it is not wrong for them to contribute money for
that purpose.” It was in this year 1893 that occurred the
much-talked-of mission of Mr. Errington to the Vatican — a
mission which was not at all “ official,” but which could well
be termed, in diplomatic parlance, “ officious,” and concern-
ing which a Roman gentleman of reliability, one who was-
well versed in the secular affairs of the Vatican, did not
hesitate to write : “ Mr. Errington, a Catholic and an Irish-
man, proved to be no honor to this double qiialification.
After many endeavors to negotiate in the sole interests of
those who wanted the agitation to end without any cessation
of Ireland’s miseries — men who hoped to deprive the Irish
people of that Pontifical sympathy which has always been
accorded to the victims of tyranny and injustice, Errington
ended by throwing off the mask in an impertinent and
mocking letter, published in the United Ireland of Aug. 1,
1885 ” (1). Justin McCarthy thus comments on this Erring-
ton mission : “ The mission, as it was sometimes called, of
Sir George Errington, then Mr. Errington, to Rome, was a
ridiculous incident in a serious story. Mr. Errington was
then a member of the House of Commons, and of that group
of Irish representatives whom Mr. Gladstone, with uninten-
tional humor, once called ‘ the nominal Home Rulers.’ He
was a man of position and of education, but he certainly was
not a striking political figure. He was more a Liberal than a^
Nationalist. He was well liked in society, but had made
no mark whatever in the House of Commons. Somehow or

(1) Casoli ; Chronicle of the Life and Pontificate of Leo XIII., p. 8 22. Rome. 1880.-

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TOPE LEO Xm. AND THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT IN IRELAND. 221

•other the late Lord Granville allowed himself to be persuaded
for a moment that Mr. Errington had great influence with the
Vatican ; and that it would be a good thing to make use of
that influence in order to secure for the English Govern-
ment the help of the Pope in the struggle against the Irish
national agitation. The facts of the whole story never came
fully out, although many attempts in and out of Parliament
were made to get the full tale told. Mr. Errington un-
doubtedly was under the impression that he had a formal
authority from Lord Granville. Lord Granville was under
the impression that he had nothing of the kind. It was ad-
mitted that a letter of recommendation had been conceded to
Mr. Errington, but it was denied that the letter imposed on
him, or entrusted to him, any manner of diplomatic author-
ity or function. There was a great deal of question and
answer, statement and counter-statement, denial and qualifi-
cation, until at last the English public began to get tired
of it. Finally, a letter of Mr. Errington’s, never intended
for publication, found its way somehow into the newspapers,
and proved that Mr. Errington himself had not taken his
mission very seriously. Then the whole subject soon passed,
in England at least, away from the attention of the public.
In Ireland, however, the national feeling still remained for
a time unsatisfied and excited. There was a good deal of
anger among the Nationalists because of the manner in which
Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville were supposed to have
acted. It was firmly believed by many persons, for a time,
that the English Government had insidiously endeavored
to bring influence to bear upon the Vatican, in order that the
Pope might be prevailed upon to censure the Nationalist
movement in Ireland. Assuredly nothing could have been
more unwise on the part of any English Government than to
make such an attempt ; but Pope Leo ivas the last man in
the world likely to allow himself to be drawn into such a
piece of diplomatic artifice. Let it be added that Mr. Glad-
stone was the last man in the world likely to make such an
attempt. I am satisfied that on the side of the Vatican, and
on the side of the English Government, there was absolute
good faith and high purpose. The one mistake made by

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the Government was in paying any attention whatever to
Mr. Errington, or in allowing him or anybody else to sup-
pose for a moment that he had been entrusted with any
diplomatic mission. There is every reason to believe that
as the Pope became more closely acquainted with the reali-
ties of the Irish struggle, he came to take a more liberal
view of the objects which inspired it, and of the men
who guided it. The sympathies of the Pope with the
Irish Nationalist cause grew and grew as that cause more
and more justified itself. Only the other day, the Pope
sent his blessing to Mr. Dillon, on the wedding morning
of the man who had taken so prominent a part in the
political and the agrarian agitation throughout Ireland.’*
Again reminding the reader that we have not proposed
to give even a sketch of this momentous period in the
history of Ireland, since an abundance of trustworthy
sources of information are at his command ; and that our
sole object is to note the relations of Leo XE. with the
Irish movements of his day ; we now touch on his course in
reference to the “ Plan of Campaign,” instituted in 1888 by
Messrs. Dillon and O’Brien. This method of warfare on the
tyrannous landlords of Ireland, conceived in minds which
were at least sincere, seemed at first to be both pacific and
invincible. All the farmers in a given estate, rich as well as
poor, were to form a kind of “ solidarity ” ; each tenant was
to contribute to a common fund, to be held by a chosen com-
missioner, the sum of money which he could afford ; this
commissioner was to treat with the landlord or his agent mr
and if the landlord hearkened to the representations of his
farmer-tenants, and agreed to a reduction of rent, such as
was demanded, then he would be paid by the representative
commissioner. If the landlord refused the compromise, he
was to receive no rent ; and if he did not capitulate, his sole
alternative was the ejectment of all his tenants. And where
would he find new tenants ? While the landlord was con-
sidering this * conundrum, the ejected tenants would be
supported, at least to some extent, by the sums that they
had entrusted to their commissioner. Certainly this “ Plan
of Campaign ” was attractive ; but nevertheless, the Holy

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT IN IRELAND. 223

See could not approve of the universal “ Boycottage ” which
it involved. Notwithstanding this objection, the Pontiff
appointed to the see of Dublin, on July 3, 1885, Mgr. Walsh,
one of the most pronounced Nationalists in Ireland ; and
the question of “ Boycotting,” so far as its morality was
concerned, seemed to be in abeyance until 1887. Then the
Pontiff appointed Mgr. Persico, a prelate of experience, a
Capuchin who had been vicar-apostolic of Agra in India, and
afterward bishop of Savannah in the United States of
America to make on the spot a severe and minute inves-
tigation into the affairs of poor, long-suffering Ireland.
According to the slow-and-sure fashion of the Roman curia, -
Persico worked during a year before he submitted his report ;
and then, on April 13, 1888, there was emitted by the Holy
Office a decree which condemned the 44 Plan of Campaign,”
as well as the system of “ Boycotting,” as contrary to Chris-
tian morality. * We give the condemnatory passage of the
decree, as noted in the circular wdiich announced it on April
20 : 44 The following question has been submitted to the

Most Eminent Lords Cardinals who, together with me
(Cardinal Monaco La Valletta), form the Tribunal for Inquiry
into Heretical Depravity : In the disputes between tenants
and landlords in Ireland, is it permissible to make use of the
means, commonly termed 4 Plan of Campaign ’ and 4 Boycott-
ing ’ ? After a long and careful consideration, Their
Eminences unanimously replied : 4 It is not permissible ' This
solution of the question teas approved and confirmed by the
Holy Father on the 18th of this month.” Great indeed was
the commotion excited in Ireland by this decree ; and the
bishops, assembled in Dublin for the purpose of allaying
the excitement, could only draw attention to the fact which
is elementary in the mind of every Catholic, namely, that
the Roman Pontiff is supreme in all definitions on moral
questions. At the same time, however, for the consolation
of the complaining victims of English tyranny, the bishops
asked the people to observ e that the Head of their Church had
assured them (the bishops) that the decree of the Holy
Office 44 did not pretend to interfere in any manner with the
Irish National Movement; that, on thfreontrary,, said, decree-

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was intended to remove every obstacle to the success of
that Movement.” The Pontiff himself hastened to reassure
his faithful children in Ireland by his Encyclical Scepe nos ,
issued on June 24 of the same year. His Holiness told the
Irish that they ought not to need an assurance of the love of
the Holy See for them ; but he deemed it necessary to remind
them of their duty of obedience to the pontifical decisions
in matters of morality. “ Our office,” he declared, “ will
not allow us to permit so many Catholics, whose salvation is
entrusted to our care, to follow in a dangerous path which
would lead to destruction, rather than to a betterment of
their condition. We must consider things as they are ; and
Ireland should discern in this decree our love for her.
Nothing can be so fatal to any cause, be it ever so just, as
to be defended by violence and injustice.” Catholic to the
core, the Irish, almost to a man, obeyed the voice of the
Head of the Church; and it required monumental impudence
indeedfor theassurance emitted by that “ Austrian diplomat ”
whom we shall soon meet in the Contemporary Review as
the apologist of certain German Catholic friends of the
Triple Alliance, to the effect that the Irish refused to accept
“ the doctrine of the Vatican, based on the principle that
the Holy See has the right to interfere in all kinds of
political questions.” The assertion that the Holy See was
or is averse to Home Rule for the Irish people was well
refuted by Cardinal Manning when, in his discussion with
Gladstone in 1890, he showed how Leo XIII. could have
obtained the re-opening of formal diplomatic relations with
England, had he been willing to oppose Home Rule for the
sister-kingdom — an offer which he spurned with indigna-
tion (1). And let us not forget that the system of “ Boycott-
ing ” and the “ Plan of Campaign,” the sole features of the
Irish Movement which our Pontiff opposed, “ were never
adopted by the Natioual Organization, and they were rejected
by Parnell, the recognized head of the National Party, and
by Gladstone ” (2). Would the hypercritics of the Leonine
policy have wished our Pontiff to be more of a Nationalist
than the Nationalists themselves ?

(1) See the Civiltd Caltnlica , 1890, p. 745.

(2) See the Dublin Fi eematV# Journal , May 25, 1888.

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THE DECISION ON ANGLICAN “ORDERS.”

CHAPTER IX.

TOPE LEO xm. AND THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. THE DECISION ON
ANGLICAN “ ORDERS.”

If the student has carefully assimilated what we said
'concerning Anglican “ Orders ” in our dissertation on the
Protestantization of England, as well as our reflections on
the Gunpowder Plot and on the Emancipation of the
Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland, he will be equipped
for an appreciation of the short disquisition now awaiting
him, without any preamble on our pari Nearly all intelli-
gent persons in Great Britain knew, in 1885, that the Pope of
Rome had granted an audience to Lord Halifax, the presi-
dent of the “ English Church Union,” and the prominent
champion of what a few Anglican Ritualists somnoriferously
acclaimed as “ Corporate Reunion ” with Rome. But great
was the astonishment of all good Protestants, when there
appeared in the English journals a letter dated at St.
Peter’s in Rome on April 14, 1895, and accounting for
itself in these opening words : “ Leo XIII., to the English
people who seek the kingdom of Christ in the unity of
the faith.” The most important of the passages of this
document read as follows : “ Some time since, in an Apos-
tolic Letter to princes and people, we spoke to the English
as well as to the other nations ; but we now address the
English by a special communication, wishing to testify our
sincere affection for their illustrious race. This desire has
been nourished by the great yearning of our heart for a
people whose glorious deeds in the olden time the Church
has always praised. And we have often been affected by
eonversations with Englishmen who testified to the kindly
feeling of the English people toward us personally, and to
their anxiety for peace and eternal salvation through unity
of faith. God is our witness how keen is our wish that
some effort of ours might tend to assist and further the great
work of obtaining the reunion of Christendom ; and we
render thanks to God who has so far prolonged our life,

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that we may put forth some efforts in this direction. But
since, as is but right, we place our confidence of a happy
issue principally in the wonderful power of God’s grace, we
have, with full consideration, determined to invite all English-
men wrho glory in the Christian name to this same work,
and we exhort them to lift up their hearts to God with us,
to fix their trust in Him, and to seek from Him the help
necessary in such a matter, by assiduous diligence in holy
prayer.” The Pope describes the work done by St Gregory
for England, “ those great and glorious events in the annals
of the Church, which must surely be remembered with
gratitude by the English people.” The solicitude of Gregory
for England was inherited by all the Pontiffs who succeeded
him. Their care for England was soon rewarded, “ for in no
other case, perhaps, did the faith take root so quickly, or
wras so keen and intense a love manifested towTard the See of
Peter. That the English race was, in those days, wholly
devoted to this centre of Christian unity, and that, in the
course of ages, men of all ranks wrere bound to it by ties
of loyalty, are facts too abundantly and plainly testified by
the pages o,f history to admit of doubt or question. . . .
In the storms which devastated Catholicity throughout
Europe in the sixteenth century, England also received a
grievous wround, for she wras unhappily wrenched from
communion with the Apostolic See, and thus was bereft of
that holy faith in which, for long centuries, she had rejoiced
in perfect liberty. ” The Pope speaks of the prayers offered
up for the return of England to the Catholic faith. “ We,
indeed,” he says, “ long before being raised to the Supreme
Pontificate, were also deeply sensible of the importance of
holy prayer offered for this cause, and heartily commended
it. For we gladly recall that while we acted as nuncio in
Belgium, we became acquainted with an Englishman, Igna-
tius Spencer, himself a devout disciple of St. Paul of the
Cross ; he laid before us the project he had already initiated
for extending a society for pious people to pray for the
return of the iEnglish nation to the Church.” The Pope
tells of the results which followed that effort. “ Very many
Englishmen wrere led to follow the divine call, and among

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THE DECISION ON ANGLICAN “ ORDERS.” 227

them not a few men of distinguished eminence, and many;
who, in doing so, had to make personal and heroic sacri-
fices. Looking at all this, we do not doubt that the united
and humble supplications of so many to God are hastening
the time of further manifestations of His merciful designs
toward the English people. Our confidence is strengthened
by observing the legislative and other measures, which, if
they do not perhaps directly, still do indirectly help forward
the end we have in view, by ameliorating the condition of
the people at large by giving effect to the laws of justice
and charity. We have heard with singular joy of the great
attention which is being given in England to the solution
of the social question, of which we have treated with much
care in our Encyclicals, and of the establishment of benefit
and similar societies whereby, on a legal basis, the condition
of the working-classes is improved. . . . Everyone knows the
power and resources of the British nation, and the civilizing
influence which, with the spread of liberty, accompanies its
commercial prosperity even to the most remote regions.
But, worthy and noble in themselves as are all those
varied manifestations of activity, our soul is raised to the
origin of all power, and the perennial source of all good
things. . . . The time cannot be far distant when we must
appear to render an account of our stewardship to the Prince
of Pastors ; and how happy, how blessed should we be if
we could bring to Him some fruit, some realization of these
our wishes, which He has inspired and sustained. In these
days our thoughts turn with love and hope to the English
people, observing, as we do, the frequent and manifest works
of Divine Grace among them ; how the number of those
religious and discreet men, who sincerely labor much for
reunion with the Catholic Church, is increasing. . . . With
loving heart we turn to you all in England, desiring to.
recall you to this holy unity. We beseech you, as you value
your eternal salvation, to offer up humble and continuous
prayer to God, who, with gentle power, impels us to the good
and the right, and without ceasing to implore light to know
the truth in all its fulness, and to embrace the designs of
His mercy with single and entire faithfulness. . . . The time

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is not far distant when thirteen centuries will have been
completed since the English race welcomed those apostolic
men sent, as we have said, from this very city of Rome, who,
casting aside the pagan deities, dedicated the first fruits of
the faith to Christ, our Lord and God. This encourages our
hope. It is, indeed, an event worthy to be remembered with
public thanksgiving. Would that this occasion might bring
to all reflecting minds the memory of the faith then preached

to your ancestors — the same which is now preached We

humbly call upon St. Gregory, whom the English have ever
rejoiced to greet as the apostle of their race, on St. Augustine,
his disciple and his messenger, on St. Peter and St. Paul,
those special patrons, and above all, on Mary, the Holy
Mother of God, whom Christ Himself on the cross left to be
the Mother of mankind, to whom your kingdom was dedicated
by your forefathers under that glorious title, ‘ The Dowry
of Mary.’ All these with full confidence we call upon to be
our pleaders before the throne of God, that renewing the
glory of ancient days, He may ‘fill you with all joy and peace
in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power
of the Holy Ghost.*” There were few manifestations of
displeasure in England, when this letter was read ; its
thoroughly Christian tone, its utter want of any spirit of
aggressiveness, its indication that the writer hoped merely
that God would warm the hearts of Englishmen to a desire
for reconciliation with the Mother Church, prevented any of
those ebullitions which a communication from “ the Scarlet
Woman ” would have produced in the early days of Wise-
man’s episcopate (1). The letter produced even a consider-

<1) ** This letter,” says Justin McCarthy, ” must have done good In England, If merely
by showing to even the most anti-papal populations here, that the Pope after all is not
anti-Christ, but only a man and a brother. From the days when Pope Plus IX. was
. denounced from every Protestant platform in Great Britain, and when Cardinal Wiseman,

. driving in his carriage to deliver a lecture in the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool, was
pelted with stones by a crowd, what a distance we have traversed ! Let it be admitted
;tbat the improved tone of public feeling on both sides has been brought about in the first
instance by the statesmanship, the temper, and the demeanor of Pope Leo himself.
Never was there in modern history a time when the mind of Protestant Englishmen was
•so set against the Papacy, as the time when Pope Leo succeeded to Pope Pius IX. Never
since the Reformation was there a time when the public heart of England W'as filled with
a more general kindliness and cordiality toward the head of the Roman Church than that
which prevails now. The Pope has shown himself a lover of all men, and he has won in
return the regard, the confidence, and the affection of all men who, whatever their creed.

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THE DECISION ON ANGLICAN “ ORDERS.” 22ST

able amount of charitable feeling toward the Roman Pontiff,
and such a sentiment might eventuate in a more undesirable
consummation; therefore it was to be answered by those
who sometimes claimed to be able to speak in the name of
the Royal Establishment The incumbent of Canterbury
published a “ Pastoral,” in which he undertook to treat of
“ a certain friendly advance made from a foreign Church to
the people of England, without reference or regard to the
Church of England.” Having introduced the subject of
union, as being desired by “ almost all the Christian bodies
known among us, including the Roman communion,” the
prelate warns Anglicans of a peril which he discerns “ in
any haste which ivould sacrifice part of our trust, and in
narrowness which would limit our vision of Christendom.”
Then we are treated to an observation which would be worthy
of a schoolboy : “ The Roman Communion in which Western
Christendom once found unity has not proved itself capable
of retaining its hold on nations which were all its own. At
this moment it invites the English people into reunion with
itself, in apparent unconsciousness of the position and history
of the English Church. It parades befores us modes of worship
and rewards of worship the most repugnant to Teutonic Chris-
tendom, and to nations ivhicli have become readers of the Bible .”
Then the prelate accurately defines the Anglican position in
regard to union with Rome, and he plainly implies what any
tyro in Catholic theology could tell Lord Halifax and his
fellow-dreamers of “ Corporate Reunion,” that all conversions
from English Protestantism must be individual — that a
reunion en masse is impossible, since Rome cannot recognize
the English Establishment and her American daughter as
churches, as organizations possessing a priesthood and the
correlatives of a priesthood. If the Holy See would only
recognize the incumbent of Canterbury and his companions-
as Christian bishops, all might be well, says this represen-
tative Anglican : “ Recognition might have lent a meaning to
the mention of reunion. But, otherwise, what is called

are open to the claims of reason, of statesmanship, and of common philanthropy. The
Pope’s appeal to the English people may have greater and deeper results hereafter* but,
happen what may, it has done much already to win English sympathy.”

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reunion would not only be our farewell to all other Christian (
races, all other churches, but we are to begin by forgetting
our own church, by setting aside truth regained through
severe sacrifice, cherished as our very life, and believed by
us to be the necessary foundation of all union.” Probably
the general sentiment of the Anglican party, when both the
papal letter and its reputed answer had been read, was voiced
by the London Daily Chronicle , when it said that the gist of
the Pontiff’s appeal was simply the declaration, “ You are not
of my flock ; God pity you ! ” But such an appreciation of
the intention of Leo XIII. is an injustice to His Holiness.
Justin McCarthy grasps the situation when he says : “ The
truth is, that the Pope expressed in his letter exactly what
he wanted to express ; his cordial affection for the English
people, and his earnest wish that they might be brought
hack to the old Church. The season must have seemed to
him appropriate to the expression of such a wish. Many
great and prominent High Churchmen were avowedly look-
ing to some sort of possible reunion between spiritual
England and spiritual Rome. Many sermons had been
preached from Anglican pulpits, which breathed this spirit
in all sincerity. The time seemed fitting to the Pope to utter
a pious wish, were it only a wish, to utter also a prayer, that
such a reunion might be accomplished on the only terms
which to him could make it a genuine reunion. It is hard to
see how any impartia critic could say that the tenor of the
Pope’s letter was only, ‘ You are not of my flock ; God pity
you.’ It reads to me much more like, 4 Be of my flock ; God
bless you.’ The Pope could have accomplished nothing by
issuing a sort of command to the English people. He could
have accomplished nothing by merely imploring them for
their own sakes to become Catholics again. By merely
expressing his pious hope, his pious wish, at all events he
expected to touch some chord of sympathetic feeling in the
mind and heart of English Protestantism, which might bring
out the first impulse toward a future reconciliation.”

While the English mind, or at least that of such English-
men as take any interest in religion of any form, was being
agitated by the appeal of Leo XIII. for religious unity, it

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THE DECISION ON ANGLICAN “ ORDERS.”

became known that the Holy See, yielding to the request of
many Ritualists, and to the persistency of two French
enthusiasts who hoped to thus “ smooth over ” the way of
conversion for many English and American Protestants,
had consented to examine again the “ question ” of the
validity of Anglican “ Orders.” We have already treated
this matter exhaustively, from a historical point of view (1) ;
we touched only incidentally on the matter, as viewed from
a theological standpoint. In the Apostolic Letter, dated
Sept. 13, 1896, in which our Pontiff gives his decision, the
subject is treated only with regard to the constant practice
of the Church in reference to converted Anglican “ bishops ”
and ministers, and with regard to the Anglican form of
“ Ordination.” Why the Holy See should have contravened
its custom of not reconsidering a matter which had been
already decided, can be understood only in the supposition
that it wished to avail itself of an opportunity to lay
before Anglicans the utter futility of their claims to the
Apostolic Succession. The accomplishment of this task is
the object of the Apostolic Letter, only some portion of
which our space will allow us to give : “ For some time,
and especially in these last years, there has been a contro-
versy as to whether the Sacred Orders conferred according
to the Edwardine Ordinal possessed the nature and effect of
a Sacrament : those in favor of the absolute validity, or of
a doubtful validity, being not only certain Anglican writers,
but some few Catholics, chiefly non-English. The consider-
ation of the excellency of the Christian priesthood moved
Anglican writers in this matter, desirous as they were that
their own people should not lack the twofold power over
the Body of Christ. Catholic writers were impelled by a
wish to smooth the way for the return of Anglicans to holy
unity. Both, indeed, thought that in view of studies brought
up to the level of recent research, and of some documents
rescued from oblivion, it was not inopportune to re-examine
the question by our authority. And we, not disregarding
such desires and opinions, and above all, obeying the dic-
tates of Apostolic charity, have considered that nothing
should be left untried that might in any way tend to preserve

(1) See Vol. Ml., p. 492, et seqq.

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souls from injury or procure their advantage. It has, there-
fore, pleased us to graciously permit the cause to be re-
examined so that through the extreme care taken in the
new examination all doubt, or even shadow of doubt, should
be removed for the future. To this end we commissioned a
certain number of men noted for their learning and ability,
whose opinions in this matter were known to be divergent,
to state the grounds of their judgments in writing. We
then, having summoned them to our person, directed them
to interchange writings and further to investigate and dis-
cuss all that was necessary for a full knowledge of the
matter. We were careful also that they should be able to re-
examine all documents bearing on this question which were
known to exist in the Vatican Archives, to search for new
ones, and even to have at their disposal all the documents on
this subject which are preserved by the Holy Office — or as
it is called the Supreme Council — and to consider whatever
had up to this time been adduced by learned men on both
sides. We ordered them, when prepared in this way, to
meet together in special sessions. These to the number of
twelve were held under the presidency of one of the Cardinals
of the Holy Homan Church appointed by ourselves, and all
were invited to free discussion. Finally we directed that
the acts of these meetings, together with all other documents,
should be submitted to our Venerable Brethren, the Cardinals
of the same Council, so that when all had studied the whole
subject, and discussed it in our presence, each might give
his opinion.” Then the Pontiff shows how the commission
inquired into the practice of the Church in the premises, as
illustrated ever since the dawn of Protestantism in England ;
and having reviewed the evidence, His Holiness says : “ It
must be clear to every one that the lately-revived controversy
was settled definitively long ago by this Apostolic See (by
Julius III., Paul IV., and Clement XI.) ; and that it is to the
insufficient knowledge of these documents that we must perhaps
attribute the fact that any Catholic winter should have con-
sidered it still an open question .” Then His Holiness proceeds
to an examination of the Anglican Ordinal (1) ; also of the

(1) “ In the examination of any rite for the effecting and administering of a Sacrament.

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THE DECISION ON ANGLICAN “ ORDERS.”

mind and aim of those who composed that Ordinal — a point
which we have already considered when treating of the dawn
of the English Eeformation. Finally, the Pontiff concludes ;
“All these matters have been long and carefully considered by
ourselves and by our Venerable Brethren, the Judges of the
Supreme Council, of whom it pleased us to order a special
meeting on the Feria V., the 16tli day of July last, upon the
solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. They, with one
accord, agreed that the question laid before them had been
already adjudicated, and with the full approval of the Apos-
tolic See, and that this renewed discussion and examination of
the issues had only served to bring out more clearly the wis-
dom and accuracy with which that decision had been made.

distinction is rightly made between the part which is ceremonial and that which is essen-
tial, usually called the matter and form. All know that the Sacraments of the New Law,
us sensible and efficient signs of invisible grace, ought both to signify the grace which
they effect and effect the grace which they signify. Although the signification ought to
be fouud in the whole essential rite, that is to say, in the matter and form, it still pertains
chiefly to the form, since the matter is the part whieh is not determined by itself but which
is determined by the form, and this appears still more clearly in the Sacrament of Orders,
the matter of which, in so far as we have to consider it in this case, is the imposition of
hands, which indeed by itself signifies nothing definite, and is equally used for several
orders, and for Confirmation, but the words which, until recently, were commonly held by
Anglicans to constitute the proper form of priestly ordination— namely, ” Receive the
Holy Ghost,” certainly do not in the least definitely express the sacred order of priesthood
or its grace and power, which is chiefly the power “of consecrating and of offering the true
Body and Blood of the Lord.” (Council of Trent, Sess. XXIII. De Sacr. Ord ., Can. 1.) In
that sacrifice which is no ” nude commemoration of the sacrifice offered on the cross.”
(Ib/d., Sess XXII. De Sacrif. Mima , Can. 3.) This form had, indeed, afterward
added to it the words, “ for the office and work of a priest,” etc., but this rather shows
that the Anglicans themselves perceived that the first form was defective and inadequate.
But even if this addition could give to the form its due signification, it was introduced too*
late, as a century bad already elapsed since the adoption of the Edwardine Ordinal, for as
the Hierarchy had become exinct there remained no power of ordaining. In vain has help
been recently sought for the plea of the validity of Orders from the other prayers of the
same Ordinal. For, to put aside other reasons which show this to be insufficient for the
purpose in the Auglican rite, let this argument suffice for all ; from them has been deliberately
removed whatever set forth the dignity and office of the priesthood in the Catholic rite. That
form consequently ought not to be considered a ptor sufficient for the Sacrament which
omits what it ought essentially to signify. For in the formula, “ Receive the Holy Ghost,”
not only were the words, “for the office and work of a bishop,” added at a later period, but
even these, as we shall presently state, must be understood in a sense different to that which
they bear in the Catholic rite. Nor is anything gained by quoting ” Almighty God.” since
it in like manner has been stripped of the words which denote the Sttmmtm Saccrdotivm.
It is not here revelant to examine whether th3 episcopate be a completion of the priest-
hood or an Order distinct from it, or whether when bestowed as they say per saUiim on
one who is not a priest, it has or has not its effect. But the episcopate undoubtedly by the
institution of Christ most truly belongs to the Sacrament of Orders, and constitutes the
Sacerdatium in the highest degree— namely, that which by the teaching of the Holy Fathers
and our Liturgical customs is called the “ Summum Saerrdotium Sacri MinMcrii Sum -
ma .” So it enmes to pass that as the Sacrament of Orders and the true Sacerdotium of

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STUDIE8 IN CHURCH HISTORY.

Nevertheless we deemed it better to defer our decision in
order to afford time, both to consider whether it would be
fitting or expedient that we should make a fresh authorative
declaration upon the matter, and to humbly pray for a fuller
measure of Divine guidance. Then, considering that this
matter of practise, although already decided, had been by
certain persons, for unknown reasons, recalled into discussion
and that thence it might follow that a pernicious error would
be fostered in the minds of many who might suppose that
they possessed the Sacrament and effects of Orders, though
these are certainly wanting, it has seemed good to us in
the Lord to pronounce our judgment. Wherefore, strictly

Christ were utterly eliminated from the Anglican rite, and hence the Sacerdntium is in
no wise conferred truly and validly in the Episcopal Consecration of the same right, for
the like reason, therefore, the episcopate can in no way be truly an validly conferred by
it, and this the more so because among the flrst duties of the episcopate is that of ordain-
ing ministers for the Holy Eucharist and sacrifice. For the full and accurate understand-
of the Anglican Ordinal, besides what we have noted as to some of its parts, there is
nothing more pertinent than to consider carefully the circumstances under which it
was composed and publicly authorized. It would be tedious to enter into details, nor is it
necessary to do so, as the history of that time is sufficiently eloquent as to. the animus of
the authors of the Ordinal against the Catholic Church, as to the abettors whom they
associated with themselves from the heterodox seats, und as to the end they had in view.
Being fully cognizant of the necessary connection between faith and worship, between the
law of bellevingand the law of praying, under a pretext of returning to the primitive form
they corrupted the liturgical order in many ways to suit the errors of the reformers. For
this reason In the whole Ordinal not only Is there no clear mention of the Sacrifice of
Consecration of the Sacerdotium and of the power of consecrating and offering sacrifices,
but as we have Just stated, every trace of these things which had been in such praise of
the Catholic rite as they had not entirely rejected, was deliberately removed and struck
out. In this way the native character or spirit, as it is called, of the Ordinal clearly mani-
fests Itself. Hence if vitiated in Its origin, it was wholly insufficient to confer Orders. It
was impossible that in the course of time it would become sufficient, since no change had
taken place. In vain those who from the time of Charles 1. have attempted to hold some
kind of sacrifice or of priesthood, have made some additions to the Ordinal. In vain also
has been the contention of that small section of the Anglican body formed in recent times
that the said Ordinal can be understood and interpreted in a sound and orthodox sense.
Such efforts, we affirm, have been and are made in vain, and for the reason tbatany words
in the Anglican Ordinal as it now is which lend themselves to ambiguity cannot be taken
in the same sense as they possess in the Catholic rite. For once a new rite has been insti-
tuted in which, as we have seen, the Sacrament of Orders is adulterated or denied, and
from which all idea of consecration and sacrifice has been rejected, the formula, “ Receive
the Holy Ghost," no longer holds good, because the spirit is infused into the soul with the
grace of the Sacrament, and the words " For the office and work of a priest or bishop," and
the like no longer hold good, but remain as words without the reality which Christ insti-
tuted. Several of the more shrewd Anglican interpreters of the Ordinal have perceived the
force of this argument, and they openly urge it against those who take the Ordinal in a
flew sense, and vainly attach to the orders conferred thereby a value and efficiency they
-do not possess. By this same argument is refuted the contention of those who think that
the prayer " Almighty God giveth of all good things," which is found at the beginning
•of the ritual action, might suffice as a legitimate form of Orders, even in the hypothesis
Hut it might be held to be sufficient in a Catholic rite approved by the Church."

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Adhering in this matter to the decrees of the Pontiffs our
predecessors, and confirming them most fully, and, as it
were, renewing them by our authority, of our own motion
and certain knowledge we pronounce and declare that Ordin-
ations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been and
are absolutely null and utterly void .” To the immense major-
ity of Anglicans, persons who had no conception of the
meaning of the term “ priest,” people whose “ parson ” was
merely a talker on religion established for the sake of good
order and respectability in the State, this Papal decision had
no meaning. To another class of Anglicans, persons whose
notion of a “ priest ” was that of a something more genteel
than a Non-Conformist preacher, a something to be classed
with a " so cute ” ecclesiastical millinery, their supposedly
poetical incense, and their mystifying vestments, the Papal
pronouncement was merely a blow to an unintelligent pride
— the Pope had dared to say that their pastor was to be re-
vered no more than a Presbyterian or Methodist dominie (1).

(1) That Dr. Potter, the present head of the Protestant Episcopal “diocese ” of Southern
New York, belongs to this second class of Anglicans, would seem to be indicated not only
by his recent (1899) “ordination ” of the anti-Biblical Dr. Briggs, but also by the following
extract from the Annual Address which he delivered, on Sept. 80, 1896, before the Diocesan
Convention of the ministers of his Jurisdiction, as his deliberate appreciation of the Pope's
decision on the validity of Anglican Orders : “ A year ago I referred in this place to the
courteous communication addressed to those in another land, who are of opr spiritual
lineage and ancestry, by a venerable Roman ecclesiastic, of whose kindly purpose nobody,

I suppose, hnd any smallest doubt; and I endeavored to point out how vain and illusory,
from any such standpoint as he then occupied, were the hopes and aspirations which be
then expressed. Since then he has made them even more so by describing all other chief
pastors than those who are his own curates as 4 a lawless and disorderly crew ’ (in what
Papal document <<an we find this exhibition of a very un-Roman style? ), and by pronounc-
ing all other orders than those derived from the See of Peter as invalid and worthless.
It is a declaration. . . .made in large ignorance of the facts , and from a somewhat nar-
row and provincial vision of the situation, (but this) does not wholly take away from the
value of this unshrinking frankness ; while one cannot but hope that its effect upon those
(the self-sty led “ Anglo-Catholic" party) whose fatuous and unmanly procedure has
Invited and provoked it may be deep and lasting. Anglican churchmen and American
Christians of the same lineage have nothing whatever to hope from the Italian prelate who
makes bold to call himself the Vicar of God. It is matter for profound thankfulness that
they have not. . . . Dismissing at last that superincumbent mass of mediaeval arut mod-
ern historical ignorance historical distortion , and historical impftsture which sur-
vives to-day as the Latin tradition , and which has for centuries buried out of sight the
primitive and apostolic foundations, men will return to those scriptural and universally
accepted symbols to which that oldest branch of the Church Catholic-the branch which is
Eastern and not Western— still adheres, and on which the best learning and the purest
faith of Anglo-Saxon Christendom equally rest. There is much to be learned by all of us
before we may hope to see the dawn of a better day for the divided ranks of Christendom
. . . but believe me, when that day dawns, it will not be in answer to any beckoning
from an Italian prelate— or not , at any rate, until he* or those who may come after

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J3ut to a very small class of Anglicans, those who believed in
a " sacrificihg priesthood,” and who knew that without that
priesthood no organization could be a Church, could have
valid Sacraments, could be, as it were, a continuation of
Christ’s incarnation in regard to the individual soul, the
decree of Pope Leo XIII. was a bitter disappointment. It
caused them to meditate as they had never yet meditated.

CHAPTER X.

POPE LEO XIII. and THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE. THE QUESTIONS
OF MIXED AND CIVIL MARRIAGES IN HUNGARY.

Among the injustices which Pope Leo XIII. has been
obliged to suffer at the hands of certain German Catholic
publicists, is the charge that his hostility to the Triple
Alliance has led him to sacrifice the interest of Catholicism
in Germany, and especially in Austria. The Pontiff, said
these gentry, could hope for no aid from the Triple Al-
liance in the matter of a restoration of the papal temporal
power ; but he could hope for aid from France, and there-
fore he flattered the French Republic, even to the detriment
of the Church in France. Such assertions come naturally
from Professor Geffcken ; they do not astound us when they
are proffered by the anonymous “ Austrian diplomat ” of
the Contemporary Review ; but they are sadly inappropriate
in the pages of prominent organs of the German Centre.
Certainly those editors were not of the calibre of Mon-
talembert, who was Catholique avant font , and who would
never have asked the Italian Catholics to accept “ accom-
plished facts,” and to shake hands with the school of Crispi.
And this politico-religious evolution was demanded in the
interest of the Triple Alliance ; for by it that unnatural com-
pact would have been strengthened, since the Papacy and
the Italy of the Quirinal would have kissed in a rapture of
“ patriotism.” The Contemporary Revieio loaned its pages*

him , have unlearned pretensions so unscriptural as to he grotesque , and surrendered
claims which the growing enlightenment of mankind makes daily more and more:
pathetic and ridiculous.”

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POPE LEO XHL AND THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE. 237

to the partisans of these theories ; and the curious reader
will find their mouthings refuted in the Civiltd Cattolica (1),
if his study of the Pontificate of Pius IX. has left him still
in need of such mental pabulum. Concerning the “ Austrian
diplomat ” of the Contemporary Review , whose ravings were
until quite recently endorsed by many German Catholic
friends of the Triple Alliance, the Abbe Kannengieser, an
Alsatian polemic who knows well the French, German, and
Italian worlds of which he treats (2), emits some notewor-
thy reflections as he places the Austrian essayist on the
same plane with two famous ecclesiastical rebels of our day :
“ Doellinger and Curci ! These celebrated men personify,
to some extent, the opposition to the papal temporal
power which a certain class of Catholics has manifested
during the last thirty years. They were priests ; but
they attacked the royalty of the Vatican with a violence,
and often with a bad faith and a perfidy, which were bor-
rowed from the worst enemies of the Church. Doellinger
had begun his campaign ten years before the invasion of
Rome, at first in a fashion of dissimulation, but in time and
by degrees with increasing audacity in each successive book
or article, until finally he indicated his disgust with not
only the temporal power, but also with the spiritual author-
ity of the Holy See, with Catholicism, and with Christian-
ity itself. At this time Curci was one of the most intrepid
defenders of the Royal Vatican ; but very soon he also
•entered on the way of apostasy. His first bombshell — it is
with design that I use his favorite expression — was explod-
ed in 1874 ; and certainly the pure gold of his early writings
had changed to the vilest of metals. Curci was then
already decrepit on the verge of the grave ; but he furnished
to the Church the sad spectacle of an ungrateful son strik-
ing his mother. Before long, to these two names we were
obliged to join that of an Austrian diplomat who, proclaim-
ing himself a Catholic, published in a Protestant periodical
of England an odious pamphlet which assailed the policy
and the person of Leo XIII. This diplomat pretended to

(1) Especially In the issue of Dec. 17, 1892.

(2) The Adversaries of the Temporal Power and the Triple Alliance. Pans, 1898.

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be a most faithful son of the Pontiff, ‘his real and-well-
beloved superior ’ ; but, nevertheless, he dared to issue ‘ the
most perfidious diatribe which has been written against tho
Sovereign Pontiff ’ (1). A Catholic of this stamp is worthy
of figuring in the company of Dcellinger and Curci ; the
three publicists have a community of thought, and complete
each other admirably. Their harmony is perfect. Dcel-
linger had called for the fall of the Pope-King ; Curci re-
echoed the demand ; and the Austrian diplomat upbraids the
Pope for not accepting their invitation with gratitude. This
is all pre-eminently natural ; since here we find in evidence
representatives of the nations composing the Triple Alli-
ance. Curci was an Italian ; the writer in the Contempor-
ary was an Austrian ; and Dcellinger was a German. It is
possible that this coincidence is merely fortuitous ; if so,
the journals of the Triple Alliance will inform us. Acciden-
tal though it may be, it is interesting, and it should be
noted. One thing is certain. The blows struck against the
papal temporal power (in our day) have not come from that
impious France, before whose gaze the three allied nations
so modestly veil their faces ; nor from that schismatical
Russia, for whom the treasury of anathemas is too small ;
nor from that heretical England, for whose sake, as the men
of the Triple Alliance tell us, Leo XIIL sacrificed the poor
Irish. The Pontiff is despoiled of his dominions, held a
prisoner in the Vatican, simply because such is the good
pleasure of the Triple Alliance. It is the Italy of Curci, the
Germany of Dcellinger, and the Austria of the diplomat of
the Contemporary Review , that have desired and procured
the loss of the papal temporal power ; the governments of
these three countries are the responsible causes of the 4 intol-
erable situation ’ (2) in which the Vicar of Jesus Christ now
finds himself.” There is not a word of exaggeration in these
sentiments Abbe Kannengieser ; and in complement of

(1) These two citations are words of Father Brandi. S. J., the author of the admirable
refutation of the pleas of the partisans of the Triple Alliance which was published in the
('iviltd Cattnlica. To the student who has not access to this periodical, we would observe
that a French version of Brandi's work, due to the pen of M. Vetter, was published by
Lethielleux of Paris In 1892.

(2) Such are the words with which Leo XIII. has frequently qualified the present circum-
stances of the Holy See.

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them we would adduce the following appreciation of the
Austrian diplomat’s ideas which was formed by the judici-
ous editor of the Civiltd Cattolica: “ According to this diplo-
mat, the Supreme Pontiff is ‘an idealist,’ an egotist who
thinks more of his own immediate profit than of the general
good ; a man who transforms ends into means. He uses his
power 4 in order to develop the Catholic, to the detriment
of the man and (?) the citizen. He uses his children as so
many players of the ignoble role of political Mamelukes,

4 traitors to their party, and for reasons which are absolutely
foreign to politics, and often opposed to the demands of
common sense.’ And then we are told that the Pope’s
policy 4 is deficient in that power of scent which is so usual
with Italian diplomatists.’ This deficiency gives color 4 to
the accusations of the Pontiff s enemies, to the effect that
he is only a politic courtier toward the powerful, despising
the weak, abandoning the unfortunate.’ But there is more ;
in the mind of this anonymous writer, 4 the venerable and
well-beloved superior ’ is a monster of iniquity. 4 He favors
and caresses an atheistic government (that of Prance), every
one of whose acts are inspired by a diabolical hatred for
our religion ; and, what seems to be almost incredible, he
systematically places at the service of that government the
most noble sentiments of Catholicism, in order that France
may continue to prosper, and to insult our religion.’ ”

The otherwise Catholic German sympathizers with this
doctrine, most of whom have now seen their mistake, were
very eloquent in their praises of the orthodoxy of Austria-
Hungary ; and undoubtedly that empire is substantially
Catholic, and some of its institutions still bear the stamp of
Catholicity. But unfortunately, Josephism, Freemasonry,
and Judaism have too frequently and too extensively tam-
pered with that vast governmental machine which was a work
of the Age of Faith. In our day, one would remain within
the limits of truth, if he asserted that the Catholic appear-
ance of many of the Austrian institutions, and the external
respect for religion in those regions, are too much like that
which a shadow is to a siibstance ; in fact, we may apply to
the religious spirit of modern Austria-Hungary nearly all.

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ihat we have predicated of that same spirit in modern
Portugal (1). In the Hapsburg empire, as Mgr. T’SerclaBS
observes, “We see in a land where the inhabitants are deeply
religious, and where the legislation appears to be Catholic,
nearly all the journals in the hands of Jews or of other ene-
mies of the Church. We see the schools delivered to a
i heterodox neutrality, under the control of atheistic teachers.
We see Catholic interests defended in parliament only by a
petty number of champions, who are badly organized. And
we see a clergy, rich indeed, but victims of an inactivity and
a powerlessness which are astonishing in a land where there
is so much faith ” (2). Such, in brief, was the religious
condition of Austria-Hungary when Leo XIIL ascended the
steps of the papal throne. In 1888, he convoked a General
Chapter of the Benedictines, so powerful in those regions.
He commanded the monks to legislate for an exact observance
of poverty by an abolition of the abuse allowing an individ-
ual Benedictine to have his own peculium ; the “ common
life ” was to include meals, all exercises of piety, and the
recreations ; the monks were to have no domestics who did
not belong to the order. The Pontiff also extended his
reforming hand to the Franciscans, who are very numerous
in Austria-Hungary. He insisted on an exact observance of
their rule of poverty ; the friars resisted, and the entire
Jewish press of Vienna and Buda-Pesth took up the bad
cause with virulent attacks on Roman despotism. In this
contest the government remained neutral ; but it did not
.show the same spirit in the agitation concerning mixed

(1) See our Vol. v., p. 267.

(2) Speaking of the attitude of hesitancy and incoherency which seems to be common
among modern Austrian Catholics, Kannengieser says : “ It Is well known that energy
is not their dominant virtue. Subjugated at once by the Jews and the Liberals, they yield
to the influence of the air that they breathe, and are swept along by the current that is
created by the foes of the Church. They should have a thousand motives for an antipathy
toward that official Italy which has deprived them of Lombardy and Venice, and which
foments Irredentism in the southern provinces of the empire. Naturally they should
sympathize with the Holy See in the conflict now being waged between the Vatican and
the Qulrinal. But some strange play of fortune has ranged the Austrians on the side of the
Revolution, against the Papacy. Of course I do not speak of the zealous Catholics who
hold Congresses, and whose number increases every day. The diplomat of the Contempo-
rary Review isc striking proof of this inexplicable anomaly ; and his example ought toopen
the eyes of even the blindest. Sympathy for revolutionary Italy Is dangerous. The cause
■of the Papacy cannot be betrayed with impunity in favor of the persecutors of the Church ;
.sooner or later, the leloaay is punished, and often by a loss of faith.”

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE AU8TE1AN EMPIRE. 241

marriages, which began, or rather was revived in 1890.
The reader should know that for many years, a Hungarian
law, sanctioned by that government which certain German
Centrist critics of the Leonine policy would have us regard
as “ very orthodox,” commanded that all the children of a
mixed marriage should be educated, according to their sex,
in the religion of the father or of the mother. Such a law
no Catholic could observe ; every Catholic knows that when
the Church tolerates a mixed marriage she does so only
when the heretical party has solemnly promised that all the
resulting offspring shall be baptized and trained as Catholics.
In the case of a Hungarian mixed marriage, before the year
1890, the law could be evaded, whenever the heretical party
was conscientious ; said party could simply avow that
he or she wished the child to be a Catholic. But the
Masonico-Jewish element, then dominant in the Hungarian
governmental councils, decided that a parent should not have
a voice in the religious training of his or her children, unless
perchance the wish was favorable to Satanism, or to some-
thing of similar stamp. Therefore, in 1890, Czaki, the
Hungarian Minister of Worship, decreed that whenever a
Catholic priest baptized the offspring of a mixed marriage,
he should furnish the Protestant minister of the locality a
certificate of said baptism within eight days ; then, in case
the priest had violated the law by baptizing the daughter of
a Protestant mother, or the son of a Protestant father, the
government, by means of the intervention of the Protestant
minister, would see that the infant received a Protest-
ant training. Instantly there was a conflict between the
Church and the State ; no Catholic pastor could connive at
an abandonment of a Catholic child to the miseries of heresy,
and .innumerable priests were “ suspended ” by the secular
autocrat, and sent to jail for a month, the punishment to be
repeated for every new offence. Strange to say, during
nearly the whole of this conflict there were found many
bishops who regarded, or feigned to regard as a mere “ civil ”
act that which was demanded by the government ; but the
holy indignation of their priests forced these prelates to
retract their assertion, and Mgr. Samassa, the archbishop of

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Erlau, was sent to Borne for the purpose of laying the mat*
ter before the Pontiff. The infamous Czaki law was con-
demned by His Holiness ; and this condemnation furnished
the German Centrist hypercritics of the Leonine policy with
material for their charge that the Pope was more severe
with “orthodox ” Austria-Hungary, than with the infidel
French Republic.

The contest in regard to mixed marriages in Hungary
began with the introduction of Protestantism into the King-
dom of St. Stephen ; and in accordance with the Catholic
law on the subject, in every case of such a contract, the
Protestant party was at first compelled to sign a promise,
called lieversalia , whereby he or she engaged to educate all
the resultant children in the Catholic faith. But in the
beginning of the eighteenth century, there was born a custom,
among Protestant prospective brides of Catholic husbands,
of exacting from their too frequently subservient swains a
document of lieversalia drawn up in favor of heresy. In
vain Maria Theresa prohibited this practice ; and when that
would-be philosopher, the “ sacristy-sweep ” Joseph II., as-
cended the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, one of his
first acts as King of Hungary was to publish what he
styled an “ Edict of Toleration,” whereby he abolished the
lieversalia, both Catholic and Protestant, and decreed that
whenever a Catholic woman espoused a Protestant, only her
daughters were necessarily to be raised as Catholics. Even
this wicked concession did not satisfy the Protestants of
Hungary. They continually distorted the edict so as to
procure greater latitude for themselves ; and in a decree of
May 24, 1782, the imperial weakling complained of their
“ abominable impudence.” But his disgust did not prevent
Joseph II. from sanctioning, in 1790, a law which declared
that sons of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother
might be educated as Protestants — a provision which was
immediately distorted by interpreting the might as must, and
which was actuated in that sense wherever and whenever
the Protestant element was sufficiently strong. During the
years which elapsed between the death of Joseph II. ( 1790 }
and the year 1840, the Hungarian clergy were almost uni-

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE. 243

versally derelict in this matter ; instead of insisting on the
Reversalia, most of them asked for no promise whatever in
regard to the future progeny, when they were about to offi-
ciate at a mixed marriage. But in 1840, thanks to the en-
ergy of Mgr. Scitowsky, bishop of Rosnavia (Rosenau),
and of Mgr. Lajtsak, bishop of Nagy-Varad (Grosswar-
dein), the clergy began to observe the laws of the Church.
Quite naturally, the revolution of 1848 confirmed and ex-
tended all the losses which the Church had thus far suffered
in Hungary. But the Catholics found no reason for com-
plaint in the Twelve Points, voted on March 15, whereby
all religions were pronounced free and equal (1) ; although
indeed it seemed strange that the Greek Schismatics and
the Protestants should be entirely autonomous in their re-
ligious affairs, while the Latin and Greek Catholics were
kept in a state of dependence on the State. We have said
that in 1840 the Hungarian clergy began to observe the law
of the Church concerning mixed marriages ; but unfortu-
nately this beginning was neither universal nor hearty.
Often the Catholic party to a mixed marriage gave to the
Protestant one Reversalia couched in the Protestant sense,
and the pastor closed his eyes to the fact ; the bishops were
just as conveniently blind, and naturally the priests did
not feel that they should be more courageous than their
prelates (2). Such a state of affairs should have satisfied
the Hungarian Protestants ; but in 1868, thanks to the
Dualism which rendered the Austrian laws against Free-
masonry inoperative in the Kingdom of Hungary (3), the

(1) In Hungary some religions are “ received ” or recognized by the State, while others
are not “ received,” but tolerated. Before 1848 there were three ” received ” Churches ^
the Catholic, the Greek ” Orthodox,” and the Protestant. The Church of the United
Greek Rite was recognized in 1848.

(2) Kaxnkngieser ; Jew s and Catholics in Austria-Hungary , p. 213. Paris, 1895.

(8) The fact of these laws existing on the statute-books of Austria must not lead the-

student to believe that Freemasonry has been seriously and permanently hampered in that
empire since the sect fell under the bau of the Church. But when the Hungarian author-
ities practically recognized the Masonic Order as a beneficent and civilizing agency, they
lifted to the plane of respectability a sect which the weak among the good had avoided,,
but which the same lukewarm Christiaus might thereafter Join. A brief description of the
rise and progress of Masonry in Austria-Hungary will be of value to the reader. Francis
I., the husband of Mary Theresa, allowed a few Masonic Lodges to be established in his
dominions ; and during the reign of Joseph II.. in 1776, the Grand Lodge of Germanv,
established in Berlin, sent a delegate, Sudthausen, to Affiliate these Lodges to itself. This
delegate was received in audience by the pbilosopbistic emperor, and he succeeded In

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J udaeo-Protestant element became so influential in the Hun-
garian parliament, that it was able to procure the passage
of a law declaring : “ All the male children of a mixed
marriage must follow the religion of their father, and all
the daughters the religion of their mother. . . . Every
arrangement contrary to this law, let it be of any nature what-
soever, is null and void.” Instead of protesting against
this iniquitous enactment, nearly all the bishops of Hungary,
whose “orthodoxy” the German critics of our Pontiff’s
policy so earnestly extol, followed the example of Cardinal
Haynald, the intimate friend of the Minister of Worship,
Baron Edtvds, in affecting to credit the assurance of that
statesman that the enactment was of no practical importance,
and would not be enforced. “ With the exception of Cardinal
Simor (archbishop of Gran) and his friends,” said Kannen-
gieser in 1895, “ none of the Hungarian prelates seemed to

Inspiring the conceited sovereign with an idea of rivalling Frederick II. of Prussia as a
protector of a glorious and powerful order. During the next quarter of a century. Masonry
developed in the Austrian empire so well, that in 1794 there were forty-five Lodges of the
different rites (See the ZirkcL organ of the Lodge Humanitas in Vienna, July 1, 1874).
But Joseph II. was disappointed in his protegees. The war with Turkey, which disturbed
his last years, was the work of the Dark Lantern, having been excited by the Prussian
adept, Herzberg in concert with the English premier, Pitt. At the same time, the leader
of the Hungarian Masons, Count Forgatzck, went to Berlin in order to prepare with
Herzberg a Hungarian insurrection ; and he was aided by the Illuminati, then guided by
Martinowicz, the provost of (Edenburg (See the Unii'crsal Biography of Michaud, art.
Martinoicicz). In 1789, Joseph II. tried in vain to undo bis foolish work by subjecting
the Lodges to police surveillance. In 1794. Francis II. prohibited the order absolutely, and
exacted from every public functionary an oath that he belonged to no secret society.
Probably it was to this act of Francis II. that the peoples of the Austrian Empire owe, to a
very great extent, their preservation of the faith to this day ; certainly it was to this act
that was due the origin of the Masonic watchword, “ Delcnda est Austria” the motto
which was to be proclaimed when success had atteuded the cry, “ Lilia pedibus dcstrue.”
This interdiction of Masonry persisted throughout the reigns of Francis II. and of Ferdi-
nand I. ; but the order subsisted by means of students, professors, merchants, and others
whose travels enabled them to join foreign Lodges, especially those of Prussia and Saxony.
Immediately after the revolution of 1848, a Lodge was instituted in Vienna, and was en-
titled St. Joseph ; its Venerable was a professor in the Academy of Engineers, Dr. Ludwig
Lewis. But the restoration of the empire brought a revival of the antl-Masonic edicts, and
the brethren were obliged, for a time, to work in the dark. In 1866 came the promise of
glorious days for the Brethren of the Three Points ; 8adowa filled them with a Joy which
they cared not to conceal. Immediately they began a combat against the Church, which
was frustrated only by the will of Francis Joseph (See Deschamps, Secret Societies. Bk.
it., ch. 11) : and by means of the press of Vienna, every journal of which, with the
•exception of the Vatevland , had succumbed to their gold or promises, they began a
campaign for the unification of Germany under the aegis of the Hohenzollern. In this
latter task they were assisted by the gold of the Jews, natural foes of the Christian
name, and therefore partisans of everything which promised to injure the Church which Is
the sole effective champion of that name. The ministry of the Saxon, Von Beust, sup-
pressed the oath against secret societies which the public officials were then still obliged to

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245

comprehend the aggressive nature of the fatal law of 1868.
None suspected that it was to be the basis for an implacable
war against the Catholics. For more than twenty years
the Masonic Lodges, inspired by the Jews, took advantage
of this law in order to harass the Church, and to in-
augurate that Hungarian * War for Civilization ’ which has
just entered into its decisive phase. This law was a tem-
porary weapon, used by the Masons until the day when,
throwing off their hypocritical disguise, they attacked everjr
Christian denomination with their Bill for the introduction of
Civil Marriage.”

The credit of this enterprise of Civil Matrimony for the
Hungarians belongs to Koloman Tisza, who became Minis-
ter of the Interior in the Wentheim cabinet in 1875, and of
whom the chief Protestant organ in Germany, the Kreuzzei -
tung, was to say, ere long, that he was “ the great intriguer
who systematically sowed the seeds of evil which have
already produced such frightful crops.” In order to actuate
his infernal design, this “ Calvinist Pope,” as he was styled,,
relied on two allies who were worthy of him — Freemasonry

take : and although the statutes still prohibited Masonry, there was formed in Prague a
“ society ” — it was not termed a “ Lodge ’’—entitled Amicitia. The Lodge Humanitas
of Vienna began to hold Its meetings at Neudorff, in Hungary ; and it was officially recog-
nized by the Hungarian authorities in 1873. Already, In 1869, this Lodge had begun to
publish its official Journal, the Zirkcl or *’ The Compass.” Other Masonic organizations,
however, did not feel the need of taking Hungary as a base of operations ; at first in
Vienna, and then In many other provinces, there were instituted International Circles
of Freemasons , the organ of which was the AU{jcmcine (Esterreische Frcimaurer
Zcitung. When the year 1874 arrived, the Cisleithan provinces of the empire counted ten
different Masonic ” societies ” ; and although the emperor succeeded sometimes in com-
pelling his ministers to check the growing audacity of the brethren, we find the Chains
(V Union, in 1881 (p. 437), quoting the Zirkcl of recent date to prove that Masonry was
then very active in the realm of the Hapsburgs. As for Masonry in Hungary, 1848 saw a
Lodge called Kossuth established in Pesth ; and in 1861, a new Ixxige was projected, but
not founded, by Edward Caroly, Stephen Estherasy, Julian Teleky, Bela Bay, George
Coraaromy, and the two counts, Theodore and Coloman Czaky. Not until the campaign of
Sadowa bad been fought, however, did Masonry make much progress in the Kingdom of
8t. Stephen ; then the constitution of the Dual Monarchy enabled the brethren to show
themselves in the light of day, and very soon the sect attained to the dignity of a quasi-
official position in the State. Thus in 1874 the Minister of Finauce deliberately addressed
the Grand Orient of Pesth, asking it to contribute to the expenses of the charitable institu-
tions of the capital, and the Zlrkel congratulated the brethren on the governmental
recognition of the order as a social force. The policy of Hungarian Masonry needs no-
elucidation ; the history of the last thirty years shows the significance of the following
words emitted by the Chaine d'Uniim in March. 1874 : ” Thanks to the activity of our
brethren who now occupy the highest political positions, we are confident that we shall
destroy the influence of that Ultramontanlsm which has hitherto dominated the reigning
House of Hapsburg ; and success in that matter will enable us to enlighten Austria.”

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STUDIES m CHUBOH HISTORY.

and the Jews. “ With the aid of these two forces,” says
Kannengieser, “ he felt sure of victory over Catholicism ; it
was certain that he could count on their thorough devotion.
The Lodges regarded him as an excellent instrument ; and
the Jews seemed to recognize in him flesh of their flesh,
blood of their blood. And indeed there must have coursed
some Israelitic blood in the veins of this arrogant Calvinist
with manners which were now falsely humble, and then
rabidly impertinent. When one saw him in the tribune
with his tall but bent figure, his white beard covering his
breast, his emaciated countenance, his frame wrapped in
dirty and threadbare garments ; and when one heard him
snuffling a dull and monotonous discourse ; one felt that a
Jew had awakened in the Magyar, after a sleep of many
generations.” Scarcely had Tisza entered the Wentheim
cabinet, than he became President of the Council ; and in this
capacity he scourged Hungary for fifteen years, substituting
■everywhere the Judaeo-Masonic for Catholic influences, and
■trying with diabolic persistency to un-Christian ize the an-
cient “ Marianic Kingdom.” One of his most impudent es-
says was his Bill providing for the “Marriages of Jews with
Christians ” — a Bill which might have produced the desired
effects, without any mention of his Jewish protectors in its
title, but which intentionally blazoned the fact that at length
the Israelite was, in very truth the superior of the Magyar.
In the Chamber of Deputies, the members of which had been
“ elected ” under the law of 1876, which was a mere engine for
ministerial corruption, the Bill met but little opposition ; but
in the Upper House it was rejected. Then the Judseo-Calvin-
ist “reformer” undertook to change radically the composition
of the Upper House ; he succeeded in 1883, and found him-
self assured of a servile majority for all of his anti-Christian
projects. Little by little he now “ laicized ” the University
of Buda-Pesth, appointing free-thinkers to all the chairs ;
he confided the administration of ecclesiastical property to
Freemasons ; and nearly all the governmental offices were
filled with Protestants and Jews, preferably with the lat-
ter. In 1879 the law of 1868 on mixed marriages was rein-
forced with this disposition : “ Whoever, in opposition to

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE. §47

the provisions of the law of 1868, receives into another
religious denomination a minor of less than eighteen years
of age, is liable to a penalty which may be imprisonment
for two months, and a fine of 300 florins.” Fortunately
the Hungarian magistracy had not been, as yet, so far
Hasonicized or Judaicized as to willingly obey the behests
of the triumphant sectarians ; and in the many hundreds of
cases where the governmental police and the Protestant
ministers dragged Catholic pastors before the tribunals to
answer for the “ crime ” of having baptized the child of a
mixed marriage, the accused were immediately dismissed.
The law of 1879, contended the magistrates, did not cover
the case of baptism. It spoke of a conversion, of a passage
from one Christian denomination to another — a thing which
does not happen in the baptism of a babe, since before his
baptism an infant belongs to no Christian denomination what-
soever, being as yet a pagan. U ntil 1890 the Tisza cabinet did
no more than fulminate menaces against the Catholic pastors ;
but being determined to attain distinction in his “ War for
Civilization,” the President of the Council finally called to
his aid Count Albinus Czaky, a man whose hatred for the
Catholic clergy was notorious (1). Having been appointed
Minister of Worship, Czaky issued, on Feb. 26, 1890, the
rescript which ordered every priest to deliver to the Prot-
estant pastor of the locality, within eight days, a certificate
of each baptism conferred by Jiim on children of mixed
marriages. The decree also enjoined that all recalcitrant
priests should be taken, not before the ordinary magistrates,
but before the prefect of police, who would be, of course, a
creature of the cabinet of the day. The reader may imagine
the consternation of such of the Catholic clergy as were de-
termined to do their duty. If they obeyed the law, and gave
to the Protestant ministers the certificates demanded, by
that very fact they proclaimed, according to the law, that the
children in question were Protestants ; and from the dawn
of reason in those children, they would be obliged to attend
Protestant schools, and to receive consequently an heretical

(1) Czaky was nominally a Catholic ; but from his mother, a Slovak Lutheran, he had
Imbibed a strong prejudice against the Church, and furthermore, his wife was a Calvinist,

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*248

•education. By this official declaration of war against the
Catholic. Church, the “Calvinist Pope” had gained a great
triumph ; but his official participation in the ensuing com-
bat was of short duration, for scarcely had the rescript
been communicated to the bishops, when a ministerial crisis
deprived him of power. Tisza had foreseen, shrewd politi-
cian as he was, that at any moment he might be relegated to
private life ; and it was with the design of leaving a succes-
sor who would prosecute his plans, that he had brought
Czaky into the cabinet. But when the feeble Francis
Joseph was requested to charge Czaky with the task of
forming a new ministry, the monarch strangely dared to
prefer another deputy of the Liberal majority, Count Julius
Szapary, a Moderate of the school of Deak. Czaky, however,
was retained in the cabinet, and the spirit of Tisza contin-
ued to predominate. Szapary was a gentleman in every
proper sense of the term, a man of experience, loyal to his
country and to his sovereign, and desirous of being faithful
to the Church. Throughout his administration he proved
that his own intentions Were of the best ; and it is not im-
probable that if the Hungarian bishops had been men
of the school of Sts. Hilary and Thomas a Becket, and
not of the school of Febronius, he would have dismissed
the representative of the Judmo-Calvinists, and his suc-
cess in regard to ecclesiastical matters would have equalled
that of his civil administration (1). It cannot be supposed
that the Hungarian prelates favored mixed marriages
in their hearts ; we must believe that some of them
were actuated by a desire of pleasing the government from
which they expected promotion and other honors, and that
others were merely animated by a desire of avoiding every
uncomfortableness. By whatever motives they were guided,

(1) During the administration, or rather dictatorship of Tisza, the Lutheran Saxons of
Transylvania were the objects of an oppression, on the part of his Judmo-Calvinist func-
tionaries, which was said to have been more unendurable than the much-decried system of
Gessler in Switzerland. Pre-eminent among these functionaries was the distinguished
ex-Garibaldian, Gabriel Bethlem ; and when Szapary became premier, he deprived Betb-
lem. Desiderius Banffy, and other petty tyrants, of their offices. The Saxons, In fine, were
treated so justly by Szapary, that they left the ranks of the opposition, and joined the
governmental majority. Szapary was equally successful with the Serbs of Hungary, who
had been oppressed by Tisza. Had time permitted, he would have gained the sympathies
of the Roumanians.

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POPE LEO XIII. AND THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE. 24JK

when they met in conference, on April 12, 1890, in the palace
of Cardinal Simor at Ofen, the primate was immediately
convinced that the majority of his colleagues were supporters,
if not accomplices, of the J udaeo-Calvinist cabal. Simor sug-
gested a collective protest from all the bishops to the Minister
of Worship ; but he found that none shared his apostolic
sentiments. Would that the firmness of Cardinal Simor had
been equally apostolic ! His weakness induced him to con-
sent to the miserable compromise of sending a circular to all
the pastors, enjoining a submission to the ministerial re-
script, until the Holy See should decide in the matter. When
this circular was received by the clergy, they must have felt
as though their prelates had ordered them to commit murder
until the Pontiff interfered for the safety of their victims.
But the pastors had been taught by a sad experience of the
results of the law of 1868 ; and now they were almost a unit
in their determination to obey the laws of the Church. More
than a hundred meetings of the clergy were held throughout
the kingdom, and nearly unanimous resolutions for resistance
were adopted — a declaration of righteous insubordination,
to which the supine or recreant bishops were obliged by mere
decency to close their eyes. The primate now asked the
Holy See to decide two questions which could have been
properly and immediately decided by the veriest tyro in his
seminary : “ Could the Hungarian clergy obey the rescript of
February, 1890 ; and could the bishops grant dispensations
for mixed marriages, while that rescript remained in force ? ”
On July 7, Cardinal Rampolla replied in the negative to both
of these questions ; and the prelates were told to communi-
cate the decision to all their parochial clergy, “ so that they
might understand how much the law of 1868 and the rescript
of 1890 were at variance with Catholic principles.” Had
the cardinal-primate obeyed the order of the Holy See, it is
very improbable that Czaky and his comrades would have
lifted the gauntlet which he would thus have flung at their
feet. Czaky gave proof of an unwillingness or unreadiness
to have the issue thus neatly drawn ; he rushed at once to
Vienna, and prevailed on Francis Joseph to bring his im-
perial influence to bear on Simor, in the interests of ternpor-

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

ization. The monarch yielded ; the primate temporized ; the
Roman decisions were not published. Meanwhile, Czaky
was engineering for a certain majority in the Chamber of
Deputies ; and in November his friends adopted a motion
declaring the legality of the law of 1868. The House of
Magnates was to act on the motion on December 18 ; and the
primate suddenly resolved to publish the pontifical decisions
in time for the members to learn their duty. He convoked
the bishops for a meeting on December 16, intending to
present for their signatures an already prepared collective
pastoral which would dutifully promulgate the papal pro-
nouncement ; and it was understood that from his place in
the House of Magnates, on the day of the discussion, His
Eminence would defend the Catholic position. The meeting
of the bishops was held, but no decisions were published ;
the Upper House discussed the Czaky measure, but the
cardinal-primate remained mute. On the previous day, the
imperial influence, again invoked by Czaky, had persuaded
Simor to continue in what his apologists term the path of
temporization, but which nearly approached the broad and
headlong road of disobedience to the pontifical authority.
In accordance with the attitude of their primate, Count
Zichj and Bishop Schlauch, in behalf of the Catholic party
— the immense majority — in the House of Magnates, declined
Xi to discuss the religious question ” ; and Czaky triumphed.
Four weeks afterward, the otherwise pious and zealous Car-
dinal Simor ceased to be tempted to temporization ; and
Czaky assigned the administration of the primatial office to
Mgr. Samassa, archbishop of Erlau, trusting that the Holy
See would confer the primacy itself on one who had been
hitherto as wax in his hands. But Mgr. Samassa was to be
of little service thereafter to the Judaeo-Calvinist conspira-
tors ; in the first place, because the task now became repug-
nant to his instincts or to his conscience, and secondly,
because the priests and the laity had now taken the great
matter into their own hands. Throughout the kingdom the
parish priests had preferred imprisonment to priestly
degradation ; and in the elections of 1892, the people showed
that such devotion was appreciated. As for the appoint-

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251

ment of Mgr. Samassa to the primatial see of Gran, the
Holy See was superior to all the innumerable intrigues
which were devised in the politico-ecclesiastical circles of
Hungary in order to effect that purpose ; and after ten months
of consideration, the Pontiff appointed an almost unknown
Benedictine monk, Nicholas Vaszary, the abbot of the mon-
astery of Martinsberg.

On Nov. 22, 1892, the Judseo-Calvinists having resolved
to free themselves from even the laissez-faire Catholicism of
Count Szapary, a new cabinet, under the presidency of
Weckerle, a creature of Tisza, undertook to govern Hungary.
Weckerle was a Rationalistic Lutheran, and a German.
Three of his colleagues, Szilagyi, Count Louis Tisza, and
•Count Bethlem, were bitter Calvinists ; the others did not
profess Calvinism, but they owed their political advance-
ment to the Lodges and to Tisza. The new cabinet imme-
diately announced its programme to the Chambers. They
were to consider projects for the entire emancipation of the
Jews (1), for freedom of worship, and above all, for compul-
sory civil marriage. The first and second articles of the
programme caused no sensation ; but when the third was
announced, the leader of the Nationalists, Count Albert
Apponyi, declared that his party would be found in opposi-
tion. Three of the most influential among the ministerial
deputies, among whom was an ex-president of the Chamber,
Pechy, curator of the Evangelicals in Hungary, announced
their abandonment of the Liberal party, because they
regarded civil marriage as injurious to society. But this
parliamentary opposition was comparatively trivial, when
the conspirators contemplated the horror excited among the
populations of the kingdom by their designs against the
sanctity of the marriage tie. Perhaps the Tisza clique was
not surprised when the Greek Schismatics showed them-
selves no less hostile than the Latin and Greek Catholics to

(1) The reader must remember that Prance was the first country in Europe to grant civil
rights to the Jews. She effected this enfranchisement by a decree of the Constituent
Assembly on Sept. 27, 1791. Denmark followed in 1849 ; England In 1849 and 1858 ; Austria-
Hungary In 1867 ; Italy in 1869 and 1870 ; Germany In 1869 and 1871 : Switzerland In 1866
and 1874 ; and Bulgaria in 1878 and 1879. As yet. Russia. Spain, Portugal, and Roumanla
do not see their way to this enfranchisement.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

its pet measure ; but even the Lutherans, especially the*
Saxons of Transylvania, although their deputies had joined
hands with the Szapary cabinet, insisted on preserving
their traditional matrimonial legislation. Of course the
Catholics, against whom the design was specially aimed,
were more sensitive than others to the indignity with which
they were menaced ; therefore it is not strange that when
the primate convoked the bishops for the consideration of a
plan of action, the hitherto negligent prelates manifested a
proper Catholic zeal, and condemned obligatory civil marriage
as a profanation of a Sacrament. To the pastorals which
the bishops now issued, to the sermons which the pastors
preached, to the murmurs of the populations, "Weckerle
frequently replied in the parliament that he would not aban-
don his design ; therefore in the session of the Upper House,
held on May 9, 1893, on the motion of Count Geza Szapary,
the magnates adopted, by a majority of 25 votes, an order
of the day which severely blamed the government. Certainly
there was hope that in a kingdom where the Catholics
numbered ten millions to the three millions of Protestants
and Jews combined, where the sovereign and the Upper
House were Catholic, the Catholic cause would triumph. But
again the bishops of Hungary were derelict ; after the emis-
sion of a few pastorals, and very ordinary discourses in the
Upper House by the bishops of Yessprim and Nagy-Varad,.
the prelates relapsed into their olden lethargic silence. Seven
months after the episcopal conference which had excited so
many consolatory anticipations, the editor of the Katholikua
Szemle of Buda-Pesth wrote to the Abbe Kannengieser :
“ What did we not hope for after that conference at Ofen?
We thought that on the horizon we perceived an aurora of a
veritable Catholic renaissance. And to-day all that enchant-
ing mirage has vanished, and we are sunk into the swamp
up to the necks. Our bishops might have played a magnifi-
cent part ; they were sure that the priests and the people
would support them. But it is not easy to break loose
suddenly from a compromising past ; Cardinal Haynald
urns not the sole bishop who had relations with the Free-
masons. . . .When such is the state of affairs, is it strange-

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE. 253

<that we have sunk so low ; that the enemies of the Church
dare so much, since they can rely upon the connivance of
the episcopate ? Whence will come our liberator ? If the
ardent words of a man of God could penetrate into our
episcopal chanceries, rest assured that happy days would
soon dawn for the Kingdom of St. Stephen.” Such was the
emergency which incited Leo XIII. to write his Encyclical
Const anti Hungarorum in 1893 ; and he took care to date it
on Sept. 2, the two hundred and seventh anniversary of the
deliverance of Ofen from the Turks. We give a synopsis
of this important document : “ With great grief we have
learned that besides other laws, concerning which we have
already complained to you (1), and which are very, detri-
mental to the Catholic faith, there have been enacted and
enforced among the Hungarians ordinances which have
entailed grave injury on the Church and her interests ; and
if we may judge by the general trend of political affairs in
your empire, those enactments will soon cause much more
damage than they have already inflicted. ... In the first place,
in order to obviate these perils, both clergy and laity must
obey the Holy See in all things ; and in the second place,
the faithful must be enjoined to avoid, as much as possible,
the evil of mixed marriages, so dangerous to the faith of
those contracting them.” Among other practical instruc-
tions, the Pope insists on a better education of the people,
in both the religious and the worldly sense ; on the holding
of frequent Catholic Congresses, and on the immediate
establishment of an efficacious Catholic press. “ The time
for serious efforts of this sort has come ; cost what it may,
you must oppose writings to writings, if you desire to remedy
the evils which afflict you ” (2). Speaking of catechetical in-
struction in the schools, His Holiness insists on its being
given by the pastors themselves ; “ and do not think,” he
adds, “ that your activity in the development of your schools
lias been so great, that it can bear no increase.” Then the
Pontiff turns to the point which must ever occupy a pre-

(1) In his Encyclical of Aug. 22, 1886.

(2) At this time, only two journals in Vienna, the Vaterland and the Deutsches Volks-
3)latt% were not either owned by Jews, or edited according to their spirit.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

eminent position in a Papal Encyclical which deals with?
wickedness of a government, for which, in the last analysis,
the people are responsible : “ The good example of a priest
is weighty indeed; therefore let each one of your clergy
exhibit himself, to the eyes of his people, as an incarnation
of virtue and continence. Let no priest pay more atten-
tion to civic and political matters, than is absolutely neces-
sary. Undoubtedly, as St. Gregory the Great advises us, we
ought not so occupy ourselves with the interior life, as to
neglect entirely the external ; especially when there is a
question of defending religion, or of furthering the gene-
ral good — things which owe ught to consider, adopting for
their attainment all the proper resources which may be
furnished by the circumstances of time and place.” The
Pope lays great stress on the folly and even wickedness of
the “ political priest ” ; and he fears that many bishops and
priests , under a pretext of the prosperity of their flocks ,
may pay more attention to earthly thafi to heavenly things .
“ Well did St. Gregory the Great say : ‘ For the sake of

charity, # we may sometimes mingle in the affairs of the
world ; but for the gratification of a taste for them, we
should never approach them, lest they soil our minds, drag
us down by their weight, and cause our souls to prefer them
to the things of heaven ’ (1). ... If you labor energetically
with united hearts for the good of religion, God will be with
you ; and we believe that you will have the support of your
sovereign, the Apostolic King, who has given so many proofs
of his love for your nation, from the very beginning of his
reign.” In this Encyclical the Pontiff showed himself as
the diplomat, no less than as the theologian and the
shepherd of souls. No- people in Christendom are so jeal-
ous of foreign interference as the Hungarian ; but Leo XIII.
knew how to respect all legitimate susceptibilities, while
scorning to repress the reproof which had been merited by
the sleeping guardians of the Temple. He opened the eyes
of the Hungarian bishops tenderly but determinedly ; and no
unguarded point in his own lines of defence invited the attack
of the Liberal forces. Henceforth the Liberal press could not

(1) 2. Rig. Past., II., eta. 7.

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POPE LEO XTIL AND THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE. 255

hope that simple minds would credit the impudent assertion
that the projected ecclesiastical laws affected no dogmas
of the Church ; that even the bishops regarded the prospect
of those laws with a well-justified equanimity.

It could scarcely be expected that the prelates of Hungary,
hitherto so persistently supine, would be suddenly trans-
formed into so many Lions of the Tribe of Judah ; but the
arousing effect of the Encyclical on many was soon visible.
On Dec. 7, Mgr. Zalka, bishop of Kaab, sent to , each of his
parish-priests the following instruction : “ Write to the dep-
uty representing your district that he must resist the eccle-
siastical policy of the government. Make him understand
that the new laws will entail evils much greater than those
which the government hopes to avoid. We shall never aban-
don the principles of the Church of St. Stephen, and we shall
never consent to the imposition of Protestant ecclesiastical
law on more than nine millions of Catholics. Marriage is a
Sacrament, and indissoluble ; the Church alone can legislate
concerninginvalidating impediments; to the Church alone be-
longs all matrimonial jurisdiction/’ This document might
have been imitated with great advantage to their cause by
the other prelates of Hungary ; but they preferred to emit a
collective pastoral, which was read in all the churches on Jan.
6, 1894, and which was, indeed, a mastrely instruction. “ In
presence of the danger threatening our flocks, we have assem-
bled before the holy relics of our King, St. Stephen, in order
to devise means for the dissipation of that danger. For a
long time the Church has been obliged to combat a legisla-
tion which ignored the rights of parents concerning the souls
of their children. In reply to our protests, there have been
designed new measures destined to rivet more firmly the

chains which had been placed on Catholic consciences

We, the bishops of Hungary, have pushed our condescen-
sion and our conciliatory spirit to the uttermost limits ;
and now we find that we can go no further in that path —
that we must defend the rights of the Church. ... It is the
duty of the faithful to fight for the Church ; to shirk
Aat obligation is a proof of cowardice. The greatest dan-
ger for the Church is in the apathy of her children ; for

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STUDIES m CHURCH HISTORY.

such indolence forms the strength of her adversaries. Un-
doubtedly, the gates of hell will never prevail against the
Church ; but through the fault of Catholics entire nations
may be lost to her. Therefore, be not ashamed of the
Gospel ! Arm yourselves for the liberty of your religion ;
manifest your faith bravely ; combat perseveringly ; always
showing, however, moderation and respect for the civil
authority. Together with your bishops and your other
leaders, protest against the projected laws, and in such a
fashion, that your parliamentary representatives will under-
stand and fulfil their duty. Your combat will be defensive,
not aggressive ; when we demand that our religious belief
be respected, we merely repel attack. It is impossible for
us not to profess the ancient faith of our ancestors, not to
proclaim our devotion to the Church— to that Church which,
during the last ten centuries, has made Hungary, has been
her benefactor, her educatrix, her mother, and whom we can-
not deny without crime. We do not attack the civil power ;
but that power is limited by the divine laws, and we cannot
allow it to pass those limits. We are not enemies of pro-
gress. The present onslaught on the Church is not progress,
but a retrogression ; a State cannot be built on the ruins of
Christian ideas. . . = Follow the examples of your ancestors.
Above all, pray that the spirit of God may inspire our legis-
lators in this grave emergency.” In accordance with the in-
junctions of this pastoral, many mass-meetings of Catholics
were held throughout the kingdom ; so great was the throng
which came from the surrounding country into Buda-Pesth
for that purpose, that the capital ceased, for several days, to
wear the appearance of a Jewish city. But the sectarians
also held their mass-meetings ; as the Protestant Kreuzzei -
tung said : “ The Masonic Lodges of Pesth, which are all
directed by Jews , have decided to agitate in favor of the
new ecclesiastical laws. The expenses of the campaign
will be defrayed partly by the government, and partly by
Jewish contributions ” (1). On March 4, there paraded the
streets of the capital, according to the Liberal organs,
100,000 men who loudly proclaimed their devotion to the

(1) Issue of Jan. 26. 1894.

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POPE LEO m AND THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE.

257

policy of the Weckerle cabinet. Sad to relate, among those
who officially reviewed the motley crowd of Radicals,
•Socialists, Freemasons, Jews, and Calvinists, were seen a
few magnates. Orczy, Theodore Andrassy, John Palffy,
Stephen Esterhazy, and Karolyi were in those anti-Oatholic
ranks ; and if the reason for so strange a fact be sought,
probably the correct answer will be found in these words
of Kannengieser : “ If one could have read the minds of
some of those Jews who passed in review before those
noble lords, and if he could also have consulted the mort-
gage-records, he would have solved the enigma very quickly.
Many of the estates of the nobles are unfortunately in the
hands of the Jews (1) ; and it was noticed on the fourth of
March that certain magnates walked arm in arm with men
whom their dignified ancestors would not have recognized.
-Certainly, such a fall was not foreseen by the heroes who
spilled their blood at Yarna, at Nohacs, at Si Gothard, in
•order to save the Kingdom of St. Stephen from the Moham-
medan yokel” Finally the Hungarian parliament proceeded
io a vote on the question of obligatory civil marriage. On
April 9, the Deputies passed the law by a majority of 175.
On May 7 the debates began in the House of Magnates, and
when the vote was taken on the 10th, it stood 139 against
the law, and 118 for it But at length a sufficient number
of the magnates were induced to join the Judeeo-Masonic
combination ; and on June 21, the conspirators gained their
point by a majority of four. What had caused this change ?
The great German Liberal organ, the Allgemeine Zeitung,
replies that “the Weckerle cabinet could boast of having
the influence of the court on its side ” (2). The Nene Freie
Presse said that “ the monarch remained absolutely neutral” ;
that is, he aided the anti-Catholic hosts, albeit unwillingly,
as we know. Certainly it was a sad reflection for the

(1) The Jews in Hungary form scarcely five per cent, of the population ; but they have
succeeded in becoming owners of at least half of the soil. Out of 3, 192 .great proprietors,
1,031 are Jews. Of the lessees of the State lands, sixty-seven per cent, are Jews. The
majority of the smaller estates are mortgaged to Jews. The worlds of finance and com-
merce belong to the Jews. Nearly all the journals of Buda-Pestb are owned by Jews.
But they do not wish to be styled Jews ; a rescript issued by Czaky ordered that the?
should always be termed Israelites.

(2) Issue of June 22, 1894.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

Catholic friends of Francis Joseph, when they contemplated
the absence of everyone of the twenty-one archdukes from
Buda-Pesth while the crucial vote was being taken; and
when they saw only two out of the eleven great dignitaries of
the court deposit their ballots. However, the Catholics
were not discouraged. The immense majority thought that
the emperor would never sanction the iniquitous law ; and in
the meantime they resolved to encourage the imperial resist-
ence by an energetic campaign throughout the country — a
campaign in which they would have the assistance of those
bishops who had responded to the call of Leo XIIL But
judge of the dismay of the Catholic party, . when, in the
beginning of September the primate of Hungary, Cardinal
Yaszary — that Benedictine monk on whom the Pontiff had
so confidently relied — ordered his clergy to abstain entirely
from “ politics.” That this order was meant to minimize the
opposition to the ministry, was the belief of both Catholics
and Liberals ; the latter openly congratulated His Eminence,
by means of the mayor of Gran, who waited upon him at
the head of a Masonic delegation, on his “loyalty and
prudence.” The event proved that the primate had no
intention of betraying the Catholic cause; that he had
yielded to the entreaties of Francis Joseph, trusting that the
sovereign would withhold his signature from the obnoxious
law. The Catholics knew how to excuse their primate ; but
another prelate, the archbishop of Erlau, Mgr. Saniassa,
committed himself so overtly to the side of the Judaeo-Cal-
vinist cabinet, that he almost paralyzed the Catholic action.
Addressing the “ Delegations ” (1) on Sept. 19, Samassa intro-
duced the subject of the next Conclave, thus affording some-
thing like a picture of a son, while his father was still living,
urging strangers to seize the estate ; but such indelicacy
was not surprising on the part of a prelate who had but
recently figured in the Masonic funeral of Kossuth, walking
behind the coffin of that Calvinist arch-revolutionist, the
bosom-friend of Mazzini. “ The question of the Conclave,”
observed Samassa, “ may soon be a present one, and we

(1) The ” Delegations ” are commissions composedof sixty members, that is, twenty
senators and forty deputies, who meet alternately In Vienna and in Buda-Pesth, in order
to discuss important matters in a “ Council of the Empire.”

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POPE LEO XIIL AND THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE, 259

ought to occupy ourselves with it ; for while it is true that
the Papacy is an ecclesiastical institution, it is of great
importance to the State, since to-day the Supreme Pontiff is
more powerful than he was when he disposed of crowns.”
Then the prelate, choosing to ignore the fact that the last
Conclave, as well as common sense, showed that the “ right of
exclusion ” is a thing of the past, reminded the government
of its supposed duty to so arrange matters that Austro-
. Hungarian influence might be brought to bear in the
selection of a successor to Leo XIIL Samassa then put two
questions to the cabinet : “ Is the Ministry determined to
use all its power to the end that the Conclave may perform
its duty with complete independence ; and has the govern-
ment resolved to exercise its ‘ right of exclusion ’ ” ? The
cabinet was but too willing to reply, using Kalnoky as its
mouthpiece, that it had good reason to believe that the
king of Italy would respect the freedom of the next Con-
clave, just as he had respected that of the last one ; and
that he ( the Minister ) did not believe that the emperor
had any intention of holding his “ right of exclusion ” in
abeyance. This “ slap in the face of the Papacy, given by an
archbishop,” as the interpellation of Samassa was rightly
termed at the time, could not have been the result of a
sudden impulse ; all parties agreed in regarding it as a
deliberate effort to place difficulties in the path of the Holy
See. At any rate, the unity of action which was so neces-
sary to the Catholic party, aud which had already been
weakened by the counsels of Cardinal Vaszary, was. now
nearly destroyed ; and the Weckerle cabinet was able to hope
for an early actuation of its entire anti-Christian pro-
gramme. In fact, on Dec. 10, the emperor-king gave his.
approbation to the anti-religious laws' the Marianic King-
dom was destined to become a modern “ Liberal ” State. For
a moment the primate and other bishops had recovered their
courage, and had sent their blessings to the Congress of
10,000 Catholics which met at Szehes-Fehervax on Nov 18>
and founded a new Popular Party ; but ere that party could
be organized, Weckerle had forced the hand of Francis
Joseph, and Hungary was endowed with the benefits of an

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STUDIES IN OHUBCH HISTORY.

atheistic civilization. Weckerle now resigned his office ; but
when seeking for a new Hungarian premier, Francis Joseph
had eyes for none other than partisans of Weckerle, and from
among these he selected Baron Banffv, a fanatical Prot-
estant, and the supreme curator of the Evangelicals of
Transylvania. For his Minister of Worship and of Public
Instruction, the new premier chose Dr. Wlassics, a profes-
sor in the Masonicized University of Buda-Pesth, and a
Radical whose policy the Liberal Hanzak thus foreshadowed :
“ Let us remember the speeches made by Wlassics during
the debates on the politico-ecclesiastical laws. He mani-
fested the most extreme Radicalism ; and we would not be
surprised if the programme of the Banffy- Wlassics cabinet
embraced a complete secularization of the Church.” The
bishops now published a pastoral in which they insisted
that they had used every possible means to prevent the
triumph of the enemies of the Church ; they drew attention
to their supplications to the emperor-king, to their collective
pastoral condemning civil marriage, and to the unanimity
with which they had voted against the Bill in the House of
Magnates. But no sooner had this pastoral been heard by
the faithful, than Mgr. Bubics, bishop of Kaschan, issued a
pamphlet in which he tried to explain the teachings of the
collective pastoral in a sense diametrically opposed to that
which the other prelates had intended ; and not to be outdone
in Liberalism, Archbishop Samassa published a commentary
on the teachings of Leo XIII. in which he travestied their
meaning. Meanwhile, the organization of the ijiew Popular
Party was being effected under the guidance of Count Ferdi-
nand Zichy and Count Nicholas Esterhazy ; and as its first
consequences Catholic journals were founded in many cities,
'Catholic clubs were opened, and the existing Catholic so-
cieties were greatly developed. It soon became evident that
at the next elections a large majority of foes to the new
ecclesiastical laws would be sent to the parliament. Then
the Judseo-Masonic machinery was set to work ; and in scores
•of places, when the day of election arrived, the govern-
mental inspectors rejected Catholic votes by the hundreds (1).

(1) Ah an instance of this Liberal method of ascertaining the will of the people, we may

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The governmental majority in the House of Deputies was
thus assured ; and with that moral influence as a support,
Banffy made his approaches on the House of Magnates.
However, the overwhelming sentiment of the country, which
the efforts of the Popular Party had placed in evidence, had
strengthened the determination of the majority of the Mag-
nates to preserve the Catholic character of the Kingdom of
St. Stephen ; and two days before the momentous question
was again debated in the Upper House, the Hungarians read
an Allocution which Leo XIII. had pronounced on March
18 for their encouragement. With consummate tact, His
Holiness had omitted to complain of the many tergiversations
of the Hungarian bishops, and had apparently remembered
only such of their actions as were praiseworthy ; and he had
said : “ The bishops of Hungary have now employed every
means to ward off the evil which menaces their Church. The
priests have labored with them, and they have been helped
also by the members of parliament who wish to preserve
the faith of tlieii: ancestors. But unfortunately these
efforts have been vain, and the enemies of the Church have
triumphed. Let it be seen by those whose duty it is to see,
how contrary to justice it is to advocate for Catholic matri-
mony a legislation which the Church has so often condemned !
It is but proper for the State to regulate the effects of mar-

clte the case of the two elections in the district of Neutra, held in March and April, 1895.
Count John Zichy, the candidate of the Popular Party, had received assurances from
nearly 1,500 voters that their ballots would be cast for him. When these electors, residents
of the rural districts around Neutra, arrived at the walls of the city, the Liberal “ clique."
as the Protestant KreuzzeUung termed the men in power, refused them entrance, although
a violent storm (it was March 30) was raging. Surrounded by a cordon of military, the
wielders of a “ free ballot ” were kept outside the walls from seven in the morning of the
twentieth until the same hour of the next day. During this interval these “ free citizens
of a free State ” were not allowed to betake themselves to any shelter, nor were they
allowed to search for any food. When Zichy beard of this outrage, he brought to the
unfortunates 1,500 large loaves of bread ; but the inspector of elections, Tarnoczy, deter-
mined to use starvation as a weapon to force the Catholic voters to return to their homes,
confiscated the food. When an affectation of decency finally compelled Tarnoczy to admit
the drenched and shivering starvelings— not one bad abandoned bis intention of voting— he
managed to prolong the balloting for twenty-one hours, during which many fainted, and'
probably would have died, bad their Hungarian peasant frames not been phenomenally
strong. When it was found that the entire 1,500 had voted the ticket of the Popular Party,
the inspector threw out 1,226 ballots. But the fraud had been so barefaced, that the
administration candidate did not dare to accept bis election ; and another balloting was
ordered. The same result, however, was proclaimed, and the government candidate now
ventured to take his seat.

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STUDIES m CHURCH HISTORY.

riage in the civil order ; but it belongs to the Church alone to
legislate concerning the marriage bond, since Christ gave to
His Church the power of raising marriage to the dignity of
a Sacrament.” On March 23, the irreligious laws were again
rejected by the Magnates ; the accepting votes being 112, and
the repelling, 127. The “ clerical ” majority was small in-
deed ; and during the next few weeks it was weakened by the
death of Mgr. Schopper, by the loss of his seat by the Jesuit,
Esterhazy, and by the imperial nomination of a Liberal
named Toths. The coup de grace was given to the Catholic
confidence, when His Apostolic Majesty yielded to the per-
sistence of Banffy, and imitating the trick of British monarclis
in similar contingencies, created ten new peers, all of them
sworn creatures of the Judaeo-Calvinist cabal. By this act,
Francis Joseph allowed the crown of St. Stephen to fall into
the mud, over which it had been suspended from the very
beginning of his reign (1) ; but calm and judicious observers
have discerned a blessing for the Hungarian Church in this
apparently triumphant issue of the anti-Catliolic conspiracy.
Cardinal Maury told the politicians of his day that it was
“ a dangerous thing to make martyrs ” ; and already the bish-
ops of Hungary are giving evidence of a possession of that
sacred fire which recently they needed so lamentably. And
the Hungarian laity have begun to realize the melancholy
truth of those words which Jules Simon, the most honest of

(1) When we reflect on the innumerable instances of weakness on the part of Francis
Joseph in regard to the Masonie and other irreligious enterprises which have signalized
his reign, we fail to understand how he could have found sufficient stamina to enable him
to refuse to return in Rome the visit which King Humbert made him in Vienna. This
persistent refusal was certainly an eloquent testimony as to bis personal sentiments con-
cerning the rights of the Pope-King. It is not improbable that the influence of the empress
was responsible for this admirable delicacy on the part of her husband. In spite of the
▼agarics— natural to a member of the Bavarian Wittelsbach family — which sometimes
prompted her to actions like thot of placing a wreath on the tomb of Heine, the Jewish
prophet of moral fllth. the Empress Elizabeth, like her sisters, the “ Aagel of Gaeta ” and
the Duchess d’Alencon, was a devout Catholic. To have visited a “ King of Italy ” in the
Pope’s palace of the Quirlnal would have broken her heart. In the Life of Fi'ancis
Joseph which Canon Waechtler published in 1891, we read a letter written by Her Majesty
to Queen Margaret, in which, after alluding to the punishments which have overtaken the
persecutors of the Roman Pontiffs, she said : ** The very thought of crossing the threshold
of the Quirlnal, when things are as they are. fljls me with fright. I deeply regret that I
cannot return the visit of my royal sister. The fault is not mine ; but of those who govern
In favor of material interests which are transient and deceitful.” The authenticity of this
letter was denied by many of the zealous partisans of the Triple Alliance : but who will
believe that a respectable ecclesiastic would dare to publish a forged letter, under the very
eyes of the aggrieved party ?

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263

all modern Liberals, was addressing to his countrymen at
the very moment when the Marianic Kingdom was being
besmirched : “ Repeat as often as you please that in 1880
you did not wish to enact an atheistic law ; that you desired
only to free the political world from clerical influence. I
would like to believe you, for I war on no man. But look
on that brutal fact — a boy of twenty hurling his dynamite
into a crowd. You kill him ; but death is not so powerful
as you think. Poor sick society, that recurs to the chopp-
ing-knife for a cure ! It is to God that it must turn ! ”

In his admirable papers on The Jetvs in Hungary , pub-
lished in the Correspondant of 1883, Father Ollivier emits these
reflections concerning the influence of the Jews in the King-
dom of St. Stephen : “ Unfortunately for the people of the
Arpads, there is such a person as the Hungarian Jew. He
is of a race but poorly defined — a graft on the German and
the Slav ; but he is intrenching himself firmly, and the fault
lies at the door of the Hungarians themselves, especially of
the nobility. It is now a long time since the saying, ‘ In
every magnate’s household there is a Jewess ’ became cur-
rent in Hungary. The traditional beauty of the daughters
of Juda lias worked more ravages among the Magyar nobles,
during the last few centuries, than were ever effected by the
sabres of the Turks. Israel was careful to use this resource
against the Christians ; it used the weapon without shame
and without measure, and the Christians opened their doors
to the Jewesses with an imprudence which has been cruelly
punished in our days. The famous saying has recently been
changed so as to read : ‘ Every magnate’s household has its
Jew.’ In Pesth, when one lounges before the shops of the
Varsi-Utesa, he gazes with stupor on the riches displayed in
the windows — necklaces, brooches, cinctures, weapons, har-
ness, all glittering with gold and precious stones, and all
having their legends and historic importance. All these ob-
jects are for sale ; for now they belong, by right of conquest,
to Jews. In the olden time when the Magyar lost the aig-
rette from his helmet, or when his sword was not discerned
at his side, men knew that his head-dress had fallen off or
his sword been broken in some battle against the Turks,

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8TUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

the Germans, or the Tartars. But now the combats a re
fought at the gambling-tables, and the Jew is always behind
the combatants. The body-stripper is on this battle-field,
just as he was on the ancient ones ; but what a pity that he
should.be so encouraged! In the days of old this body-
stripper was compared to a vulture whom night brought to
the field of carnage, and whom the army-followers beat off
with sticks ; but to-day, the light of day serves the human
vulture, and the follower kisses the hand which locks up the
knight. Undoubtedly this is a matter of taste ; but it does not
please me to see the Hungarian nobles tributary to the Jews,
and preparing the subjection of the Hungarian people to th©
same domination.” Apropos of this reflection concerning
the estates of the Magyar nobles, we notice that the Deut-
sche Volksblatt of Vienna, in its issue of June 16, 1871, states
that during the previous seven years the Rothschilds had
become owners of the estates of more than sixty of the
greater nobles of Bohemia ; that then the real estate of the
Rothschilds in Bohemia was eight times more valuable than
that possessed in that kingdom by the imperial Hapsburgs.
The reader will note that the ownership of these estates gives
right, not only to seats in the Bohemian Landtag and the
Austrian Reichsratli, but also to many ecclesiastical “ rights
of patronage.” Continuing his observations, Father Ollivier
says : “ The clergy resist this invasion, and it is fortunate
that ecclesiastical property is inalienable, and cannot
pass into the hands of the Jews. There remains therefore
for the weak some guarantee of that protection which the
magnates cannot afford. But let the Hungarian nobles-
beware ! When their last acre of land is exchanged for the
last loan from the usurer — and that day does not seem
distant — they will cease to be of any use to the State, and
their history will terminate with a disgraceful page. Already
they are not necessary ; to many they appear superfluous.
Nobility has its reason of existence much more in the ser-
vices that it renders, than in the benefits it has conferred ;
and in the popular estimation one ceases to be noble when
his name, no longer representing any grandeur, is bandied
in the antechamber of a courtesan, or in the cloakroom of a

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gaming-house. God help the descendants of the founders
of Hungary, for they know not now how to help them-
selves ! ” (1).

CHAPTEE XL

POPE LEO XIII. AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE.

In the dissertation wherein we demonstrated that Bismarck
adopted all the force of his slavish bureaucracy, and all the
would-be subtleties of “ German science,” in the interests of
religious persecution, we described, at least incidentally, the
relations that subsisted — such as they were — between Leo

(1) Concerning tbe vital question of Anti-Semitism which Is now engaging the attention
of the Austrian populations, even in a greater degree than it occupies the minds of
Russian, German, and French publicists, much light has recently been shed by the very
un-Catbolic Arnold White, in his Modern Jew (New York, 189P). ‘"The cause of the
people’s fury against the Jews in the Middle Age,” notes this author, “ as it has been at
all times since, was the unlawful usury and the proflts made from all classes of people by
Jewish intrigue and cunning. Numerous grievances were at that time brought by the
citizens of various towns before their government. Only in those days people were not
clear about this, namely, that, in the Jews they had to deal with a foreign nation and an
alien race, and therefore religion had to be used as a characteristic.” What the Austrian
Anti-Semites really desire is thus expressed : “They want to see the influx of Jews into
various districts limited by lawful means, because they feel it to be hurtful. They seek,
therefore, to obtain a revision of the laws, by which the Jews may be made to experience
certain restrictions.” And again- the author quotes from the Anti-Semite Catechism :
“The Jews, under the mantle of religion, form in reality a political, social, and commer-
cial company, which, guided by uniform principles, and with a secret understanding
between themselves, aims at the subjugation and exploitation of non* Jewish peoples. The
Jews in all countries and in all languages are in this aim at one, and work for its
accomplishment unanimously. It is therefore impossible for the Jews in the country,
where they happen to dwell, ever to take an honest interest in the lot of their non- Jewish
compatriots. In short, a Jew can never cherish an honest patriotism : he is always, and
above all, conscious of being a member of tbe * chosen ’ Jewish nation ; and if be poses as
German, French, or English, it is, at most, a calculated hypocrisy. From within tbe pale
of bis peculiar community, the Jew looks out upon all Gentiles as bis enemies, whom he
has to combat with cunning and treachery. While conforming to his peculiar moral law,
the Jew considers himself above all other codes, and holds himself prepared to transgress
all laws of the land, but always in such a manner that the abuse cannot be brought home
to him. The Jews consider themselves the natural aristocracy of mankind, and believe,
on this ground, that (hey should be masters of the world.” Touching the latter assertion.
Major Osman Bey reports in his book The Conquest of the World by the Jews , how an
eminent Jew at a gathering of Jewish elders at Cracow, in tbe year 1840, said : ** 8o long
as we do not have the newspapers of the whole world in our hands to deceive and blind
the people, our mastery remains a chimera.” When, in the year 1852, the French Masonic
luminary, the Jew Cremieux, issued a summons to the founding of The Israelitish
Alliance , he wrote : ” Our nationality is the religion of our fathers— we know no other.
The Jewish doctrine must, one day, cover tbe whole earth. Success is certain. Every
day will the net which Israel casts over the globe extend Itself. Let us make use of all
opportunities ; our power is great, let us learn to employ it. What have we to fear ? Tbe

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

XIIL and the arrogant chancellor. Let us now observe that
when our Pontiff mounted the Chair of Peter, the Bis-
marckian enterprise had been in full career for more than
six years ; and as we have seen, the event had shown that it
had become necessary for the chancellor to ignore his
confident declaration that he “ would never go to Canos'sa.”
The sole question then agitating the minds of both William
L and his Minister turned on the possibility of a discovery
of the particular road to Canossa which would be the least
humiliating to their respective susceptibilities ; and in a letter
to the emperor, dated April 17, 1878, a letter which was first
published by Mgr. T’Serclaes in 1894, Leo XIII. clearly and
calmly indicated the ground, and the sole ground, on which
the Holy See and the German Empire could arrive at an

.day is Dot far off when the wealth of the world will belong exclusively to the Jews." Cer-
taiuly the spectacle afforded by the monarchy of the Hapsburgs of to-day Justifies the glee
of Cremleux. Now the dual monarchy contains more Israelites than any other country in
Europe, with the exception of Russia. In the territories at present included iu the Aus-
triau or Cisleilhau Kingdom there were iu the reign of Marla Teresa 200,000 Jews; in
1890 there were 1,148,305. In Hungary, under Joseph II., iu the last quarter of the last
•century, there were but 25,000 Jews ; the number has now reached 1,000,000. In the year
1890, out of 1,214,803 inhabitants iu Vienna, 118,495, or about ten per cent., were Jews.
Buda-Pesth contaius some 150,000 ; Prague possesses more than thirty synagogues. In
-Galicia the Jews have uot diminished in number, in spite of the fact that many annually
leave the country ; on the contrary, in the last twenty years they have increased 84 percent.
Iu Austrian Silesia they have iucreased 64 per cent, in the same time : in the Bukowlna,
74 per cent. The Jews now form 11.7 per cent, of the population of Galicia, 12.8 per cent,
of that of the Bukowlna, and 16 per cent, of the population of Silesia. A fifth part of the
land in Galicia belongs to Jews. In the Bukowlna, 22 rer cent, of the great landed pro-
prietors are Israelites, aud the remaining real estate is, for the most part, encumbered with
debts to them. Although the Jews form hardly 5 per cent: of the total population of the
Austrian or Clslelthan Kingdom, one-third of the professors are of Jewish origin. Of 280
teachers in the Vienna University, in the same year, about 30 per cent, were Jews. The
Buda-Pesth Polytechnic, iu the same year, had 578 scholars, of whom 201 were Jews ; the
•Comas Academy, 599 scholars, of whom 480 were Jews. In the Gymnasien (classical
.schools) and Rcalschulen (high schools) of Hungary, 20 per cent, of the pupils were Jews,
although they constitute but 4.5 per cent, of the population. In the Austrian Gumnasien
and Realschulcn the Jews furnished 18.5 per cent, of the attendance. In the intermediate
•schools (Mittclschulen) only 22 per cent, of the scholars were Christians, and 77 per cent.
Jews, on the other band, of the 6,274 pupils at the technical schools in Vienna, only 110
were Jews, an indication of their aversion to handicrafts as a means of livelihood. At the
•end of 1887, out of 660 attorneys In Vienna, 350 were Jews. At the end of 1889, out of 999
members of the Vienna Stock Exchange. 883 were Jews. Of the Vienna houses in the old
parish districts. 70 per cent, are the property of Isrtelites. Of military doctors ih 1877,
7 per cent, were Jews ; in 1889, 23 per cent. ; whilst, of the doctors admitted to practice in
1889, 39 per cent, were of Jewish origin. Finance and commerce are, practically, in
Israelite hands; were it not for the assistance of Jewish bankers, most of the manufacturers
could not carry on their business. Throughout Austria-Hungary the press is almost
exclusively in the hands'of Jews. “ Have you any Christians on your staff ? ” the editor of
the great Buda-Pesth newspaper, the Pester Lloyd , was asked. “ I think we have one,"
was the reply.

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE. 267

agreement If the reader has been one of those indiscreet
zealots who tried, at that time, to convince themselves that
Leo XHL wag guilty of inordinate condescension to the
cabinet of Berlin, we would submit to his consideration the
following passages of the pontifical communication : “ We
find ourselves *under the necessity of calling the attention of
Your Majesty to a matter which is of pre-eminent interest to
the Catholics who are subject to your sceptre. Your Majesty
asks us to remember the happy past, when the good sense of
the German people led to an obedience to the supreme
authority of the State ; and then, deploring the attitude now
presented by the Catholic priesthood, Your Majesty asks for
the intervention of our authority, in order that the above-
mentioned blessings may again be enjoyed. Now, on our
part, we ask Your Majesty to note that if there is any
difference between the past and the present conduct of your
Catholic subjects, the sole reason for that difference will be
found in that civil legislation which has pretended to change
the divine constitution of the Church, and which has forced
Catholics, in spite of themselves, to consider the sad alter-
native of refusing obedience to the new laws of Your Majesty,
or of obeying the laws ol God and of His Church. Let it be
ordered, without any prejudice to the sovereign authority of
Your Majesty, that the Catholic priesthood and people be
free to observe the laws of their Church. And since the new
civil legislation in Germany has suppressed those fundamental
articles which guaranteed the perfect independence of the
Catholics, let Your Majesty, in his magnanimity, restore a
state of things which was as conducive to the tranquillity of
consciences, as it was to the true interests of the State. If
this be effected, Your Majesty may rest assured that on our
part nothing will be wanting for the restoration of harmony
between the two supreme authorities.” But this road to
Canossa was no less uninviting to the cabinet of Berlin, than
had been the others which the chancellor had pretended to
discern as awaiting the German Minister who would extend
the olive-branch to Rome ; and even when Falk had been
retired from office, and the more moderate Ptittkamer
had taken his place, the Catholics of Germany were told

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that “it was their obstinacy, their pigheadedness in not
respecting the laws of the State, that caused their suffer-
ings.” However, as we have seen, the Gefman chancellor
finally entered on the road to Canossa ; and in 1882, the
road had been so far traversed, that a Prussian Minister-
Plenipotentiary was accredited to the Vatican. It is well
to note that when Bismarck was interpellated in the Beich-
stag, as to the reason for accrediting to the Vatican a
diplomatic representative from Prussia, and not from Ger-
many, the chancellor replied that he regarded the Catholic
Church as an institution of the country, that is, of Prussia ;
but that there might soon be a representation of Germany at
the Papal court. By this avowal Bismarck admitted that
he had abandoned his theory that the Church was a foreign
institution ; in other words, the “man of blood and iron ”
now condemned the principle which had actuated the “ May
Laws,” and he was ready to go to Canossa by proxy. In
1885, Bismarck manifested a further inclination for recon-
ciliation with the Holy See, when he agreed to the selection
of Pope Leo XIII. as arbitrator in the matter of the differ-
ence between Germany and Spain concerning the Caroline
Islands ; but it is not impossible that the chancellor had
thought that this deference would so mollify the pontifical
heart, that His Holiness would endeavor to implant some
ultra-imperialistic sentiments in the German clergy. How-
ever, in the letter which the Pontiff wrote to the chancellor
on this occasion, it was clearly shown that diplomatic sweets
do not induce the Holy See to temporize in matters involv-
ing the liberty, of the Church ; it became more evident than
ever that if Bismarck desired peace with Rome, it would be
necessary for him to break the chains which he had fastened
on the German Church. This truth was accentuated when,
on January 6, 1886, the Pope wrote to the Prussian bishops
a letter in which he declared : “We have ever assured the
government that we wish to meet all its desires, whenever
those desires are compatible with the divine law and the
dictates of our conscience.” On all points which are es-
sential, however, adds His Holiness, he will remain invincibly
steadfast : “ For although we desire peace most sincerely,.

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we cannot controvert th^ ordinances of God ; if the defence
of these ordinances demands the sacrifice, we are ready, fol-
lowing the example of so many of our predecessors, to suffer
the last extremities.” This Apostolic firmness conquered ;
aud William I. immediately took the first decisive step in the
way of conciliation. Mgr. Kopp, the bishop of Fulda (after-
ward archbishop of Breslau, and a cardinal), was called to
the Prussian House of Lords ; and at the same time, the
government abandoned its “ discretionary powers.” Other
concessions followed successively ; and in the debates which
ensued in the parliament, one is surprised on hearing the
author of the “ War for Civilization ” perorating in favor of
the first victims of that war, as he combats the opposition
of Gneist, Yirchow, Richter, and other priest-eaters who had
so powerfully seconded his ignoble efforts. When a “ scien-
tific ” demonstration of the dangers of peace with Rome
was attempted by Gneist, the chancellor replied : “ I regard
the picture drawn by* the deputy as somewhat exaggerated.
He will admit with me that before 1871, the Catholics enjoyed
those same rights which now we are trying to restore to them ;
and nevertheless, at that time we, the Evangelicals, raised
no complaints because of any derogation from our rights.”
When Yirchow insisted that the government was imprudent
in its onward march in the way of concession, Bismarck an-
swered : “We recognize the validity of the law ; but if we

wish to force its application, we will be compelled to a con-
tinual course of rigorous proceedings. We will raise the
conflict to the rank of an institution. As for me, I shall no
longer help in doing violence to our Catholic compatriots.”
On May 10, 1886, the Reichstag passed the “Fourth Law
for Peace,” and on the following day William I. signed the
document which practically terminated the “ War for Civil-
ization.” Thus it came to pass that this Bismarck, who,
according to a despatch of the Prince of Reuss, then (1880)
ambassador of Germany in Vienna, had declared that a re-
vision of the May Laws was “ an egregious foolishness which
he had never encouraged by a single word,” finally besought
the Reichstag to deliver him from the last remnants of those
laws. “ To this pass had come the Man of Iron,” remarks

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Geffcken ; “the man who had declared that he would never
go to Canossa. This rhodomontade, which is cut into the
marble of a monument which was erected in his honor at that
time, is now a piece of bitter irony. Bismarck, who knew so
admirably how to practice the advice, ‘ fecisti , nega ’ (in
other words, ‘ lie, lie always! ’) afterward pretended, in order
to cover his defeat, that he had never wished for more than
an equitable arrangement of the relations between Church
and State, and that ‘ other hands ’ meddled with his plan.
It is a pity that those ‘ other hands * cannot be discovered ;
for the chancellor was never known to be dominated by any
other person whomsoever ” (1).

Some of the first official acts of William II., who, after the
short reign of Frederick III., had succeeded to the sceptre of
his grandfather in 1888, gave promise of a due deference to
a proper respect for the rights of the Holy See, as well as an
indication that the new reign would not be signalized by any
attempts to renew the “ War for Civilization.” The official
announcement of the accession of William II. was received
simultaneously by the courts of the Vatican and of the Quir-
inal : the young emperor, desirous of avoiding a question of
precedence between the Roman Pontiff and the sovereign
who posed as King of Italy, and wishing not to • appear to
definitively (so far as he could) solve that Roman Question
which has not yet been solved, had ordered that Leo XIII.
and Humbert should each receive the notification of the new
reign at the same moment, by different and special envoys.
And when he opened the Prussian Landtag , the newr emperor-
king announced : “ It is with great pleasure that I perceive
that our recent politico-religious legislation has modified the
relations between the States and the spiritual head of the
Catholic Church, in a manner that is acceptable to both
parties ; and I shall exert myself to preserve religious peace
in my dominions.” Shortly after this declaration, it was
announced that William II. was about to visit his ally, King
Humbert, in the Eternal City ; and naturally the party of
the Quirinal desired to interpret the event in a sense hostile
to the never-dormant claims of the Pope-King — a desire

(1> Leo XIII. in the Eyes of Germany , Edited by Boyer d’Agen.

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which was thwarted by a declaration, on the part of the-
coveted guest, that he would also visit Pope Leo XIIL in his*
palace of the Vatican. Naturally the Pontiff expressed his
willingness, even his desire, to welcome a Christian sovereign
to the foot of the Apostolic throne ; but by means of his-
secretary of state (then Cardinal Rampolla del Tindaro), he
informed His German Majesty that the desired audience could
be granted only on condition that there should be an exact
observance of the etiquette instituted by Pius IX., and ap-
proved by himself, for the guidance of all sovereigns who
would desire to visit both the Roman Pontiff and the Savoy-
ard who was then resident in the stolen Papal palace of the
Quirinal. Such was the real meaning of the warning which,
though couched in the mellifluous terminology of modern
diplomacy, was conveyed to William II., German Emperor.
When His Majesty would wish to pay his respects to Pope
Leo XIIL, he should start, not from the stolen Quirinal, at
the portals of which Papal palace he would have alighted,
on his arrival in the capital of the Popes ; he should proceed
to the residence of the Prussian ambassador to the Holy
See, a locality which, like that occupied by all embassies,
enjoyed the prerogatives of extra-territoriality, and from
that neutral spot he should proceed to the palace-prison
of the Head of the Catholic Church. Of course the ar-
rangement was, in a sense, a diplomatic fiction ; but the deep-
ness of its meaning was well understood by the Italianissimi
and by the German emperor, and that potentate was so
anxious for the friendship of Leo XIII., that he could not
avoid a course which necessarily entailed mortification on the
heir of Victor Emmanuel. Accordingly, on October 12, 1888,
William II. proceeded to the Palazzo Caprauica, the resi-
dence of Schloetzer, the Prussian Minister to the Vatican ; and
there the emperor and his suite entered, not carriages belong-
ing to the Savoyard of the Quirinal, but state-carriages which
had been brought from Berlin for the purpose, and then he
went to his interview with the Roman Pontiff. On his
arrival in the court-yard of San Damaso, the emperor was
received with the ceremonies usually adopted when sover-
eigns visit His Holiness. Having entered the palace, having

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ascended the scala regia , and having traversed the antecham-
bers connecting with the private apartments of the Pontiff^
the emperor found Mgr. Marini ready to welcome him at the
door of the room in which he was to meet the spiritual sov-
ereign of Christendom. Marini informed the Pope that the
German emperor desired an audience ; and instantly His
Holiness appeared on the threshold, and extending his hand
to his guest, he drew him into his private chamber, where he
invited him to be seated. Leo was far more at ease than
the emperor; for the witnesses of the first instant of the
meeting narrated that as William took the hand of the Pon-
tiff with his own right hand, he dropped his helmet from
the left. Particulars of this momentous interview are want-
ing, unless in the minds of those who credit the journalistic
utterances of the day concerning matters which must be
necessarily unknown ; probably the following narrative,
given by the Civiltd Cattolica , of all European periodicals
the least addicted to exaggeration and journalistic hysterics,
is the most authentic : “ The Holy Father, after an exchange
of the usual courtesies, opened the interview by expressing
a regret that he had not been able to receive William I L
under more favorable circumstances ; that is, in the same
manner in which Gregory XVI. had received William IV. of
Prussia, and in that in which Pius IX. had welcomed the
Prussian prince-royal in 1853. His Holiness deplored the
situation to which he was reduced ; and he observed that
even the visit of His Imperial Majesty had caused the
so-called Liberal press to make remarks which were most
injurious to the Holy See. Replying to these obser-
vations, the emperor alluded to the great prestige enjoyed
now by the Papacy in Europe ; and he declared that the
name of the present Pontiff is everywhere venerated. As for
the criticisms of newspapers, His Majesty insisted that they
were not worthy of consideration. ‘ Nevertheless/ replied the
Pope, ‘ the position of the Pontiff is now such, that I cannot
return Your Majesty’s visit, unless I am willing to compromise
the Papal dignity.’ Then the Holy Father began to dilate on
the increasing audacity of the anarchists, and on the absolute
necessity of restraining such enemies of society ; but scarcely

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273

had he introduced this subject, when the interview was ab-
ruptly interrupted by the unannounced entrance of Prince
Henry, the brother of the emperor. This painful incident
quite naturally prevented His Holiness from continuing the
subject which he had introduced (1) ; but before the audience
terminated, he said a few words concerning the religious affairs
of Germany.” Such is probably the most authentic account
of this memorable interview which is now obtainable. The
extent of the emperor’s responsibility for his brother’s ex-
hibition of a gross defiance of an etiquette which obtains even
in the palaces of merely secular sovereigns — an etiquette
which is prescribed by the most elementary principles of
politeness for observance in the house of another — may never
be known. For the credit of his race, it may be charitably
supposed that the German emperor had not deliberately de-
signed one of those would-be impressive coups de thedtre which
time has shown to be so dear to his heart We may be
allowed to believe that the “ incident ” was simply a conse-
quence of that megalo-cephalous condition in which so many
Germans found themselves after their unprecedented triumph
over France. Nor is it improbable that the disgraceful
episode was merely an illustration of that German and
“ Anglo-Saxon ” Protestant spirit — essentially boorish — con-
cerning which the members of the pontifical household, as well
as every guardian of the treasures of intellectual and artistic
Home, recite so many indignation -exciting stories. Pope Leo
XIIL could not have been utterly surprised by the Hohen-

(U It is uncertain whether the palm for boorishness in the matter of the interruption of
this audience should be awarded to Prince Henry, the scion of the Hohenzollern, or to
Count Herbert von Bismarck, the heir of the Man of Iron. What appears to be certain,
after an analysis of all the rumors of the day. is that before leaving the Quirinal, the
Germans had reflected that probably the Pope would introduce some subjects which they
might prefer to Ignore ; that in order to save the emperor from any consequent inconvenience.
It had then been arranged that Prince Henry should so time his arrival at the Vatican as to
be able to enter the audience-chamber thirty minutes after the imperial entrance. So
things were carried out ; but when Henry presented himself at the entrance of the Pope’s
private apartment, the chamberlain on duty barred bis way, quietly informing him that
His Holiness was engaged. The noble Hohenzollern loudly proclaimed his identity ; but
the chamberlain kept the wand of office stretched across the doorway. Then Herbert, the
son of his father, came to the rescue of the imperial intruder : and when the official insisted
on performing his duty, the boor exclaimed : “ Do you know who lam? Iam Herbert von
Bismarck ! ” The Roman replied : “ Ah ! that explains your conduct, but it does not
excuse it.” However, the chamberlain was thrust aside, and the worthy descendant of
Frederick II. stalked into the pontifical presence.

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zollern exhibition. One day, as he was proceeding to the
palace gardens for his usual promenade, he passed through
the Vatican Library. As he entered each hall, the whisper
that His Holiness was present was passed around, and every
student arose and genuflected. In one of the halls, a number
of manuscripts, for the study of which he had obtained a
special pontifical permission, was engaging the attention of
the famous epigraphist, Mommsen. The Schleswicker heard
the notice of the Pope’s entrance, but he simply shrugged his
shoulders with implied contempt ; a more civilized investi-
gator told him to arise, but the barbarian shrugged again,
and settled more firmly in his seat (1). The remembrance of
innumerable facts like this of Mommsen prepared our Pontiff
for the otherwise astounding news that Herbert von Bismarck
was retained in the society of men who claimed to be gentle-
men. In the meantime, the German emperor had demonstrat-
ed his own idea of the meaning of the term “ gentleman,” by
an exhibition of the value at which he estimated his promises.
He had agreed to return from the Vatican to the Prussian
embassy, thus observing the same diplomatic fiction which
he had respected on his way to the Papal audience ; but as
soon as he arrived in the courtyard of San Damaso, he
ordered his coachman to drive him direct to the Quirinal.
However, when William II. returned to Berlin, he did not
show that his interviews with the men of the Quirinal had
rendered him more favorable to a renewal of the “ War lor
Civilization.” When the members of the Evangelwclie Bimd
urged him to a persecution of their Catholic compatriots,
protesting that they knew well “ how to distinguish between
the sincere piety of many Germans and the spirit of Jesuit-
ism which daily grows more rampant in the Roman Church ” ;
finishing with the assertion that “ the right of legitimate
defence commands us to fight against Jesuitism ” ; he re-
plied that while he appreciated the efforts of the League for
the spread of Protestantism, “ he trusted that the members,
both in their writings and in their words, would never
be wanting in respect for the faith of their adversaries,

(1) Masson ; Rome During the Holy Week. Paris, 1891.— Boyer D’Agen ; Leo XIII.
In The Eye s of His Contemporaries , p. 186. Paris, 1895J.

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE. 276

and that they would accord that tolerance which proceeds
from respect.” In 1893, William II. visited the Pontiff in
his palace for the second time ; and on this occasion there
occurred no contretemps like that in which Prince Henry and
the young Bismarck had distinguished themselves in 1888.
The ostensible reason for this second trip to Rome was a
desire to congratulate their “ Italian Majesties,” Humbert
and Margaret of Savoy, on the anniversary of their silver
wedding. Again we quote from the Civiltd Cattolica:
“ William II. departs from the Quirinal ; he separates from
those who term themselves masters of Rome, effacing, so to
speak, every trace of his connection with them, and enter-
ing into his own territory — for as such does international
law regard the locality where his envoy-extraordinary to the
Holy See resides. Having arrived at the Palazzo Capranica,
he sits at table with princes of the Church, some officers
of the pontifical court, and the gentlemen of his own suite.
The members of the de facto government and all their ad-
herents are rigorously excluded, just like so many strangers.
When the repast is finished, the German empress arrives
accompanied by a lady of her court ; she is dressed in black,
with a black veil on her head (1), as etiquette prescribes.
She also, in order to be received in the Apostolic palace ot
the Vatican, has left her hosts of the Quirinal, and has come
to the Prussian legation. The carriages, the horses, the
liveries, all the paraphernalia of the cortege , are not Italian;
still less have they come from the court of the Savoyard
sovereigns. It is necessary that the visit to the Holjr
Father be made in such fashion that it may appear clearly
that the German monarch proceeds directly to the Vatican

therefore the entire equipage has come from Berlin

‘ A more picturesque cortege could not be desired,’ said the
Corriere della Sera . But whither are their Imperial
Majesties proceeding with all this pomp and solemnity?'
What is the object of this public demonstration? All
Rome can tell you. Their Imperial Majesties are going to>

(1) Many English and American journals. Ignorant as usual in regard to everything
papal, asserted that the German empress had refused to subject herself to this etiquette.
Had she been so foolish, she would not have been received in audience by the Pontiff.

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the Vatican ; they are about to render homage to that
personage whom the dominant faction, the official press, the
Ministers and the deputies, every day term * the enemy of
his country,’ the ‘conspirator,’ the ‘cancer of Italy,’ the
‘ knife which transfixes the Italian heart* . . . The emperor
and empress are introduced into the presence of him who
has sat in Home during nearly nineteen centuries ; of him
whose kingdom, older and more glorious than any in Europe,
has seen and will see the births and deaths of so many
republics, kingdoms, and empires. The sovereigns bow
respectfully before the grand and venerable Leo, the vigi-
lant guardian of order and of social peace, the legitimate
representative and energetic defender of the principle of
authority, the Vicar of Him who is the King of Kings.”
After about twenty minutes of conventional conversation,
the empress introduced and presented to His Holiness the
ladies who had accompanied her ; and then she withdrew
in order to visit the palace and the Basilica of St. Peter,
leaving her imperial husband to private conversation with
the Pontiff. The private audience of the emperor lasted for
more than an hour; and the papal attendants remarked
that whereas the face of William II. had exhibited great
anxiety when he entered the pontifical cabinet, it appeared
radiant when he issued forth. After this audience, the
German emperor went directly to the Prussian legation ; and
at the lunch which was served for him and several cardinals,
he presented a magnificent snuff-box to Cardinal Ledochow-
rski, the intrepid Pole who had been the chief victim of the
Bismarckian “ War for Civilization,” saying, as he made the
peace-offering : “ Your Eminence, may the past be forgot-
ten ! ” Cardinal Rampolla del Tindaro, the papal secretary
.of state, received the decoration of the Black Eagle ; and as
the Berliner Tageblatt afterward observed, since that honor
was usually conferred only on monarchs, and was never
given to others, unless they were Ministers whom the Prus-
sian sovereign wished especially to distinguish, the fact was
to be regarded as one of great political importance. These
circumstances, reflected the Italian Liberal Corrispondema
Verde , “together with the conditions which the emperor

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POPE LEO m AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE. 277

was made to accept, ere he could enter the residence of Leo
XHL, lead us to suppose that the silver wedding was, in the
eyes of the guest of the princes of Savoy, merely a pretext
for his visit to the Leonine City.” Naturally the Italian
“officious” journals protested against this view of the
matter ; but they all admitted, with the Nation e, that the
emperor’s visit to the Vatican “ was a political event of the
first importance.” Some agreed with the Tribuna, that it
was “ a cloud interposed between the young emperor and
the Italian people ” ; others again echoed the complaint of
the ministerial Folchetto, that “it was strange to see a
sovereign, a guest of the king of United Italy in Italian
Rome, going to salute an old man whom the (Masonic),
Italian sentiment of (the new and fictitious) Rome loves not
but rather regards as the incarnation of all that threatens
its rights.” There were certain journals, principally Ger-
man, which ascribed the imperial deference to a cherished
hope that His Holiness would induce the German Centre to
vote for the military bill which Bismarck had introduced into
the Reichstag. One of the chancellor’s organs complacently
remarked that if the ministerial measure were carried, it
might be recorded, like all Pontifical Bulls, as “ given at St.
Peter’s in Rome.” Probably the reader remembers that in the
first days of 1893, Bismarck proposed to augment the peace-
effective of the German army by 83,000 men ; and that the
government rejected the amendment of the National-Liberals
which allowed an increase of only 49,000. In this emer-
gency, a prominent Centrist, Baron von Huene, of his own
accord (Windthorst was now dead), entered into negotiations
with the ministry, on the basis of an army increase of 70,000
men, to be effected in three or five years. It was generally
believed that the Centre would support Huene’s overture, if
it were rewarded by an abolition of the law against the
Jesuits ; but when the decisive moment arrived, the immense
majority of the Centre voted against the bill. However,
twelve of the most prominent of the Catholic Centrists,
probably “ seduced by the new turn of the imperial policy,
and by their relations with the court ” (1), voted with the

(1> T’Serclaes ; loc. cit.i Vol. ii., p. 281.

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government This secession caused but little embarassment
to the Centre ; it is worthy of mention principally because its
spirit accounts for the course pursued during the ensuing
few years by certain German Catholics in reference to the
policy of Leo XIIL Nor was this spirit entirely wanting
in Dr. Lieber, the re-organizer of the Centre, who would
otherwise have been worthv of the succession to “ His Little
Excellency,” the noble Windthorst. During the debates in
the Reichstag on the Centrist motion to recall the Jesuits,
Lieber repelled the charge that the Curia Romana pursued
a, course which was hostile to German interests ; but, declared
this lay theologian, “ if the Curia were to embrace the Rus-
sian and Francophile policy, the infallibility of the Curia
would not prevent German Catholics from fulfilling their
•duties toward the German people and empire” (1). We
are accustomed to the tiresome reiteration of murmurs about
the Curia Romana in the land which produced Lutheranism,
Febronianism, and Josephism ; but there are few German
truly Catholic publicists who would not recognize non-
sense in any talk about “ the infallibility of the Curia.”
Even Paolo Sarpi, the most venemous foe of the Curia , never
insinuated that it claimed infallibility. If the Centrist
leader intended to use intelligible language, he intended to
convey the idea that the infallibility, or rather the authority
of the Pope , would never prevent German Catholics from do-
ing their duty toward their government. Lieber may have
been addressing the gallery — the gallery of ignorance, and
of Protestant prejudice ; but he must have known that even
the political duties of men are often embraced by that
morality, of which the Church is the guardian. As for the
matter of the Triple Alliance against that of France and Rus-
sia, which was the cause of aberration on the pkrt of Lieber
and many other Centrists, the fear of an active papal attach-
ment to either was necessarily unfounded. In the words of
the Civiltd Cattolica , “ The Holy Father is superior to all
the agreements and alliances of the day, just as the interests
of the Church are above all the designs and desires of tem-
poral governments. He who lowers the Papacy to the rank

fl) Cited by T'Serclaes, ubi supra.

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of politicians, does not understand the Papacy. Leo XIII.
is above both the Franco-Russian and the Triple Alliance.
However great may be the love which, in spite of her rulers
and politicians, he feels for Catholic France, he will never
sacrifice the interest of other Catholic peoples ” (1). It was
because of mistaken or feigned apprehensions like those of
Lieber that certain organs of the Gorman Centre, at this
time, attacked the Catholic press of Italy, because the latter
did not advocate an abandonment, on the part of the Italian
Catholics, of their policy of abstention in political affairs.
These gentry hoped, in fine, to effect a “ reconciliation ”
between the Vatican and the Quirinal, and thus to strength-
en the Triple Alliance to the detriment of France. But
these same German Catholic journals knew that the Italian
Catholic press was merely obeying the injunctions of the
Pontiff; and furthermore, they should have known that, as
Mgr. T’Serclaes observes, “ the Pope could not modify his
policy in order to please the Triple Alliance ; and that this
Alliance, which might have been otherwise a matter of in-
difference to him, as are other political alliances, was
necessarily to be regarded by him as hostile to the Holy
. See, since it contributed to the perpetuation of the exist-
ing condition of affairs in Rome, to the detriment of the
pontifical independence.”

The present and future condition of the Church in Ba-
varia furnished material for continual anxiety in the mind of
Leo XIII. during the early years of his pontificate. While
the people were still thoroughly Catholic, the official circles
were almost entirely either Josepliist or Rationalist, and the
once well-promising University of Munich had for four years
been a mere vehicle for the dissemination of “German sci-
ence ” (2). On Dec. 22, 1887, our Pontiff addressed to the Ba-

(1) Issue of Jan. 6, 1894.

(2) In 1825, King Louis I., who bad just mounted the Bavarian throne, determined to
reorganize the University of Landsbut, which had become intellectually deficient, and a
hotbed of infidelity. Following the advice of Christian scholars like Ringseis, the mon-
arch adopted a programme of studies which excited hope for the future of thetr country
in the minds of the Bavarian clergy, and he transferred the University from Landsbut to
Munich. This University then became a “ mixed ” establishment, having both Catholic
and Protestant Faculties of Theology ; but the king expressly ordained that no unchris-
tian teaching should ever be tolerated. Besides that of Munich, there were also established
the exclusively Catholic University of Wurzburg, and the exclusively Protestant one at

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varian bishops a most touching expression of his solicitude in
regard to their flocks, in his Encyclical Officio sanctissimo.
Alluding, in general terms, to the attacks of the Bavarian
government on the rights of God and His Church, His Holi-
ness reminds the clergy of their duty to bear in silence all that
can be suffered without prejudice to truth and virtue, taking
care, however, to be prudent in their toleration of evil, and not
seeming to countenance it in any way whatever. When he
approaches the subject of education, the Pontiff exhorts the
faithful to establish Catholic schools “ wherever the public
schools are neutral.” He repeats his often-given warnings
against Freemasonry, that sect which, of all others, is “ so
hostile to the Church of God^ but which knows how to dis-
simulate, even under the appearances of piety and of charity
when such a course can aid its seduction of men, and es-
pecially of youth.” The Pope tells the Bavarian Catholics
that he realizes full well the difficulties under which they
labor ; but he foresees that they will triumph over their ene-
mies, if they will only be united, “ and use those legal means
which their adversaries adopt, when they wish to enact laws
which are opposed to the freedom of the Church.” Having
forwarded this Encyclical to the Bavarian bishops, Leo
XIII. requested the Baron Franckenstein, President of the
Upper Chamber of Bavaria, and then leader of the Centre
in the German Reichstag, to repair to Rome, in order that
His Holiness might confer with him concerning the relig-

Erlangen. In choosing the professors of the University of Munich, care was taken to
ignore most of the olden professors of Landsbut. some of whom were pronounced infidels,,
while most of the others were of very inferior calibre. The selection of the new Faculties
was entrusted principally to Ringseis; and among the first whom that diplomat induced
to try their professorial fortunes in the Bavarian capital were the famous representatives
of Catholic and Protestant philosophy, Baader and Schilling. 8teps were then taken
procure the services of the great GOrres, who was then residing in France, having been
expelled from that Prussia which his eloquence had saved from ruin. The government of
Prussia, however, feared the oratorical powers of its victim, and endeavored to induce
Louis I. to turn a deaf ear to Ringseis, Clemens Brentano, and other able Judges who
begged for the appointment of GOrres. Fortunately the cabinet of Berlin assumed a dicta-
torial attitude ; whereupon the Bavarian sovereign defied the Prussians by inviting the
pntriot to his capital. With the acquisition of G&rres the Catholic influence in the Univer-
sity of Munich predominated. The Protestants boasted indeed of men like Schelling,
Raumer, Thiersch, and Oken ; but Gflrres was a host in himself, and be was supported by
Baader, Ringseis, Klee, Moebler, Moy, Philipps and the two Daellingers. father and son-
From that time until the early sixties, when the unfortunate younger Doellinger began,
to exhibit the tendencies which were to eventuate in the catastrophe of his life, the Cath-
olic world could find small cause of complaint in the University of Munich.

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ions affairs of the Bavarian kingdom, and of the whole
empire. Franckenstein availed himself of this honor ; and
when he reported the particulars of the conference to the
Bavarian Catholic “group” in the Reichstag, that body
replied, through its president, Ruppert : “ This intervention
of the Holy Father is an act of the greatest importance ;
the mere fact that the August Pontiff should place himself
in relation with our group shows his esteem for it The
words of the Supreme Pontiff are concise but eloquent. By
his wish for the Centre to continue its combat, His Holi-
ness approves its course in the past, and indicates its course
in the future. Union being the greatest of forces, the Pon-
tiff exhorts the Bavarian Centre to maintain that union.
By dint of perseverance, and by means of a firm support of
the Holy See, our group will not fail to attain its object —
the liberty of the Church, and the consolidation of Christian
principles.” Animated by these sentiments, the Bavarian
bishops addressed to the prince-regent a respectful but
firm remonstrance against the continuance of the last ves-
tiges of the Bismarckian “ War for Civilization ” in Bavaria.
The prince, still under the influence of his little Bismarck,
Lutz, refused to receive this remonstrance officially ; but
the prelates gained their point by means of the post, where-
upon His Highness requested them not to communicate
the document to the public — a favor which they deemed it
prudent to grant. Several months afterward, Lutz replied to
the episcopal representations with a letter which merited
the encomium of the prince-regent as being a firm defence
of “ the rights of the crown.” These royal rights were sup-
posed to have been vindicated by a refusal to give a Catholic
character to the secondary schools of the kingdom, and to
the Universities of Munich and Wurzburg; by a persistence
in the banishment of the religious orders ; and by a con-
tinuance of the absurd abuse of the royal placet , even in
matters of Catholic faith. The “ rights of the crown ” were
supposed by Lutz and his royal master to be reinforced by
a new declaration that the “ Old Catholic ” sect formed a part
of the Catholic Church ; and by an insistence on the validity
of the Edict of Religion of 1827, which had annulled most of

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STUDIES IN CHUBCH HISTOBT.

the provisions of the Concordat of 1818. Leo XH1. could
not allow this ministerial pronouncement to pass unnoticed ;
and on April 29,. 1889, in a letter which complimented the
Bavarian prelates on their energy, he declared that the
Bavarian premier had advanced doctrines which were con-
trary to the Catholic faith. It was quite natural, therefore,
that in a grand Catholic Congress held in Munich on the
following Sept. 23, there should have been adopted an address,
signed by 16,000 members of the assembly, praying the
prince-regent to satisfy the ever legitimate demands of the
Church. It is strange that the scion of the House of
Wittelsbach did not deign to reply to this appeal from the
most devoted friends of his family ; although shortly after-
ward he gave assurances of his royal protection to a
Protestant “missionary” association which was named after
the most bitter enemy of his dynasty, Gustavus Adolphus.
'However, the action of the Congress of Munich was seconded
by the Catholic party in the parliament ; and after much
tergiversation, Lutz so far yielded as to promise that he
would ask the Federal Council to recall the Redemptorists,
who had been banished because of their pretended affiliation
to the terrible Jesuits. As for the royal placet , a presumed
necessity ere any doctrinal decision of the Church could be
obligatory on a good Bavarian, the premier would continue
to uphold the heretical claim ; as for the status of the “ Old
•Catholics,” lie would regard them as members of the Catholic
Church, until the Holy See had “ formally pronounced them
separated from its communion ” — as though the anathema
of the Vatican Council had not been sufficiently formal. But
the Catholic parliamentary opposition remained indomitable ;
and finally the minister declared his willingness to regard
the “ Old Catholics ” as excommunicated, not because they
did not receive the dogma of Papal Infallibility — a doctrine
which had not received the placet of His Bavarian Majesty —
but “ because they did not believe in the Immaculate Concep-
tion of the Blessed Virgin.” The Catholic party accepted
the ministerial decision, although of course it carefully noted
that it rejected the npnisterial reasoning ; the sectarians
now lost the governmental pecuniary aid which alone gave

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283

to them some semblance of vitality, but the principle of the
royal placet remained intact. The prince-regent evinced his
chagrin because of this partial victory of the “ Ultramon-
tanes ” by informing the archbishop of Munich that another
Congress of Munich would be regarded as & danger to public
tranquillity. A few days after this petty ebullition, His
Highness lost the services of Lutz. Seized by a mortal ill-
ness, this nominally Catholic minister, who had educated
his children in heresy, and who had used all his power to
un-Catholicize Bavaria, requested and received the Sacra-
jnents of the Church.

CHAPTER XI L

POPE LEO xm. AND THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE.

If the reader has accompanied us carefully during our in-
dagations into the vicissitudes of the Church in Russian Pol-
and (1), he has undoubtedly arrived at the conclusion that the
spirit of Russian “ Orthodoxy,” like that of Freemasonry, is
essentially brutal, and even sanguinary, whenever there arises
a question in which the interests of Catholicism are involved.
And nevertheless, from the beginning of his pontificate,
Leo XIII. cherished not only the hope of inducing the Col-
ossus of the North to grant religious freedom to its Catholic
subjects, especially to that portion of Poland which it dom-
inates, but also an idea that he might eradicate from the “ Or-
thodox ” Schismatic mind those prejudices against the Holy
See which are perhaps more political than religious, and
which are due — be it said with all consideration for Russian
susceptibility — to a not unpardonable ignorance. Probably
the confidence of the Pontiff was similar to that entertained
by the perspicacious Cardinal Consalvi, when he said to
Pope Leo XII. : “ Our gaze must be ever fixed on the
vagaries of the Russians, but reason commands us to be
persistently patient in their regard. If they are ever to re-
turn to our communion, they will return of their own accord ;

(1) In our Vol. v., cb. 3.

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STUDIES m CHURCH HISTORY.

and we may be sure that if this immense mass continues to
grow, it will encounter the dangers which all political
obesities eventually meet Catholicism alone, Most Holy
Father — and I say it with happy tears of gratitude to God
— Catholicism alone can never be too extensive ” (1). No
statesman in the world appreciated true patriotism — even
a sacred thing when the civil rights of a citizen are involved
— more exactly than did Leo XIII. ; and it was because he
believed that in Christendom there can be no true patriotism
which is not Christian, that he held with Tchadaieff — one of
the best minds produced by modem Russia, although
Nicholas I. officially pronounced him a fool — that “Chris-
tian reason cannot endure any kind of blindness, especially
that of national prejudice, since this prejudice is the most
inimical to unity among men ” (2). Conscious of his own
respect, as Pontiff and as man, for the principle of nation-
alities, when properly understood, Leo XIII. made in all
sincerity implicit overtures for an amicable understanding
with the Russian court, as soon as he mounted the pontifical
throne, when he notified that accession to Alexander II.
In the following year, the Encyclical Quod apostolici , issued
against Socialism, was received probably with greater
pleasure by the friends of the Russian government, than by
any other class in Christendom ; for the Slavic spirit, ever
prone to extremes, had become permeated by the Socialistic
doctrines, and had begun to actuate them with a ferocity
and a resolution hitherto unknown in European revolutionary
manifestations. Russian society was then trembling, down
to its very foundations ; the decrees of the Nihilists were
executed with an infernal ability which seemed destined
to triumph over both autocracy and bureaucracy. Alexander

(1) Artaud ; Life of Leo XIT.% Bk. 1, p. 170.

(2) Count Dimitri Tolstoy, whose bitterness against Catholicism we have already de-
scribed (Vol. v., ch. 3), is an excellent illustration of the Russian “ orthodox” idea of the
mutual repugnance of Catholicism and the spirit of nationality. Speaking of the noblest
female character produced by mddern Russia, he said : ” My reason is pitiless ; it can
never pardon Madame de Swetchlne for having changed herself from a Russian into a
French woman, as she herself declared. Of course we understand that the change was
subject to the distrust of Catholicism for every nationality whatsoever.” See the article
by Gagarin in the Correspondant of June 25, 1860. If Catholicism is so hostile to the
principle of nationalities, why did Dimitri Tolstoy show himself so venomous toward
Polish Catholicism ?

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285

II. perceived too well that he could hope for no aid from
§ the corruption and venality of his civil administrations.
Nor could he rely on any active religious propaganda on the
part of his vicious and ignorant “ Orthodox ” clergy, as a
defence against the subversive enterprises of the sectarians.
Still less could he appeal to the intelligence of the educated
young men of Russia, from whose ranks the Nihilists were
chiefly recruited ; for each college or university was either
a hot-bed of infidelity or a swamp of indifferentism. Thrice
within ten months the imperial life was attacked ; and after
the last attempt, Feb. 17, 1880, the czar and his advisers
thought it would be well to admit once more, at least into
Poland, the counsels of the Roman Pontiff. As a beginning,
permission was given to Canon Satkievitch, then adminis-
trator of the diocese of Warsaw, to receive the Encyclical
Quod apostolici ; and he was requested to send a copy to
each of the Catholic pastors, with instructions to explain
the document to their flocks. Not one Catholic had been
convicted of Nihilism, terrible as had been the persecution
in Poland, and grievous as the burdens of the Catholics still
were. Why did Alexander II., of whose “ Orthodox ” zeal
we 'have had abundant and sickening proof, grant this
concession? He could scarcely have supposed that the
Catholics, after a patient endurance of confiscation, knout,
freezings, and Siberia, would now, when persecution had
become less violent, suddenly develop into incendiaries
and assassins. It is more natural to suppose that the czar
admitted the Papal Encyclical into his dominions, in hopes
that its arguments might have some effect on his “ Orthodox ”
subjects.

In his Encyclical Grande Munus, issued on Sept. 30, 1880,
our Pontiff recalled all that his predecessors had effected for
the spiritual and temporal welfare of the Slavic race. He
reminded men that it was through Sts. Cyril and Methodius,
sent by Rome, that the Slavs had received the faith and
civilization ; and he asked the “ Orthodox,” so attached to
their special liturgy, to remember that the Holy See had ex-
pressly approved the action of those apostles, when they
introduced the use of the ancient Slavic language into their

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STUDIE8 IN CHURCH HISTORY.

religious services. And in order to show that he cherished
no idea of “ Latinizing ” the Catholics of the Greco-Slavonic
Rite, a calumny ever studiously propagated by the Schismatic
leaders (1), the Pope declared that thereafter the founders
of the Greco-Slavonic Rite, the glorious Sts. Cyril and
Methodius, would be honored by the celebration of their
Office throughout the Catholic world. This pontifical declar-
ation produced an excellent effect among the Slavs ; and on
July 5, 1881, His Holiness received a deputation of more than
1,200 persons, representing every Slavic nationality, excepting
that of Muscovy, which would never, of course, be allowed to
share in such a demonstration, unless, perchance, it were in-
tended as a Pan-Slavic aspiration toward the yearning bosom
of Holy Russia. In his remarks to this deputation, Leo XIII.
used very guarded terms, carefully avoiding anything like
an indication of rancor toward the Russian government ; and
although the interests of “ Orthodoxy ” had been seriously
menaced by his recent restoration of the Catholic hierarchy
in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2), and by his creation of three
United-Greek vicariates-apostolic in Bulgaria, the Pontiff
soon experienced the satisfaction of learning that among the
more enlightened of the Russians a warm feeling in favor of
Catholicism was being developed. Undoubtedly this senti-
ment was not shared by the official Russians, the creatures
and instruments of the Holy Synod ; as a Protestant journal
of the day remarked, “ loud lamentations were heard in St.
Petersburg and Moscow, just as in Constantinople and
Athens/’ because of the newly-enkindled energy of the
United-Greek propaganda in the Slavic provinces of Austria,
in Bulgaria, and in Turkey — a propaganda which Leo XIII.
was about to aid by his foundation of free scholarships in the
seminary of Adrianople, and by his establishment of a new
seminary in Salonica. But that in unofficial Russia many

(1) For the deep significance of the terras “ Latinlzation,” “ Polonization,” etc., when
used by “Orthodox” writers, see our Vol. II., p. 136.

(*2) The cabinet of St. Petersburg regards all the missionary efforts of the Church In
Bosnia, Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Roumania, and Rouraella, as so many manifestations of an
able policy which would make the Papacy the guide of the Slavic current which Holy
Russia claims as her own appanage. The Holy Synod affects to discern in the pontificate
“ diplomacy ” a desire to create a union of all Slavic Catholicism, under the protection of
^Austria, a power whose governmental policy is now no more Catholic than that which is
devised in Berlin.

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE RU8SIAN EMPIRE. 287

sincere hearts were then beginning to yearn for ecclesiastical
union with Rome, was afterward admitted by one of the princi-
pal organs of the “ Orthodox ” Church, the TJ&ra, which had
the hardihood and the honesty necessary for the utterance
of the following language : “ The higher ranks of society in
Si Petersburg, being like an immense lever in this matter,
tend toward giving an impulse to an ecclesiastical union of
the East with the West In proof of this assertion, we can
adduce, without fear of contradiction, the authentic testimony
of very many Russians, even of one august member of the
czar’s own family. In fact, these same persons have begun
the work of uniting the Eastern to the Roman Church. The
intellectual and the social elite of Russia regard this event
as the salvation of Russian society, the remedy for all our
social evils ” (1). It cannot be supposed that such journalis-
tic gossip would have produced any effect in* the pontifical
mind ; but the visit of the Russian chancellor, Giers, to the
Vatican on Dec. 5, 1882, followed by the restoration of the
venerable Mgr. Felinski to his arcliiepiscopal see, had en-
couraged Leo XIII. to hope for better days, at least in Pol-
and. We may imagine the dismay of the Pontiff who had
believed in the supposedly lenient tendencies of Alexander
III., when he learned that the bishop of Wilna, guilty of hav-
ing censured two of his clergy, because of their apostasy,
had been suddenly summoned to the capital, and then, with-
out any opportunity for an appeal to the .czar, had been
exiled to Siberia. During the next few years, the Russian
government frequently manifested a velleity to discover some
modus vivendi with its Catholic subjects ; but not until 1888
were the advances serious, and then they were made through
the Russian ambassador in Vienna. But no sooner did it
transpire that probably the Pontiff and the czar were arriv-
ing at a solution of their difficulties, than the entire Masonic
press of Europe emitted a howl of virtuous horror and out-
raged patriotism. Rome was about to sacrifice the religious
and national interests of Poland, cried the sectarians ; Rome
was about to sanction the introduction of the Russian language
in the Polish churches, and therefore Rome was to be the

(1) Cited by the Moniteur de Rome , Jan. 15, 1893.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

prime Russifier of Poland. The truth of the matter was that
in 1883, Giers had endeavored to procure the consent of
Cardinal Jacobini for the use of Russian in the non-liturgical
services of the Polish Churches, and in the teaching of the
catechism ; but the Pontiff had categorically refused to allow a
Russification which would have endangered the faith of the
growing generation of Poles. And the same categorical re-
fusal was given in 1888. Defeated on this point, the cabinet
of St. Petersburg endeavored to obtain from the Pope an ap-
probation of the Russian law which prescribes that all the
children of a mixed marriage shall be educated in the schism.
The refusal of this demand did not cause a break in the
negotiations ; it cannot be supposed that the Russian states-
men ever dreamed that the Head of the Catholic Church
would hand over the little ones of his flock to perdition. A
Russian ambassador, Iswolski, was accredited to the Vati-
can— a terrible blow to such of the Centrists of Germany as,
Catholic though they were, would have delighted in an
estrangement of Russia from the Pope, simply because
Russia was the secret ally of France, and because they were
upholders of the Triple Alliance. The negotiations of 1888
and 1889 were, in two respects, triumphant for Leo XIII.
He gained the re-opening of diplomatic relations with the
czar; and he was allowed to {ill the long-vacant sees of
Wilna (1), Tiraspol, Plock, Lublin, Mohilow. In these nego-
tiations, is there anything which might justify the accusation,
brought by German publicists like Professor Geffckenandthe
u Austrian diplomat ” of the Contemporary Review , to the
effect that by such “ unworthy compromises ” Leo XIII. sac-
rificed the true interests of Catholicism to his “ dream ” of a
restoration of the papal temporal power ? Since Geffcken
unblushingly adopts as his own the brazen lie of the “ Aus-
trian diplomat ” representing Leo XIII. as addressing the
czar as “ Patriarch of the North,” we are not surprised,
even though we are sickened, when he thus explodes :
“Leo XIII. did not hesitate to sacrifice Catholic interests in
Russia, that he might gratify the secret ally of the French

(1) The exiled bishop of Wilna was permitted to return from Siberia, to resign bis
diocese, and to leave tbe empire with a pension.

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POPE LEO TUL AND THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. 289

Republic. The attitude of all previous Popes, when brought
face to face with the czars, had been firm and worthy. Thus,
Gregory XVL feared not to talk to Nicholas, the persecu-
tor of the Church in Poland, just as Ambrose spoke to
Theodosius ; and the autocrat of the North listened to him
in silence (1), To-day, the Church in Poland is fallen so
low, that in comparison with her, the Polish Church of the
days of Nicholas I. was free ; now she is reduced to the
level of a Department of State. Entire dioceses are sup-
pressed ; Catholics are excluded from every public employ-
ment ; their churches are closed, and when they try to enter
for worship, they are knouted, and then sent into exile. In
a word, these Catholics are reduced to the alternative of
apostasy or Siberia.” We have described the condition of
the Church in Poland under the sway of Nicholas I.; and the
reader shall judge whether the lot of the Polish Catholics
was, as the German professor audaciously asserts, less pain-
ful than that of their descendants, so cruelly “ sacrificed ” by
Leo XIII. “ German science ” has seldom exhibited effron-
tery like this of the much-lauded ex-professor of Inter-
national Law and Statecraft in the University of Strasburg,
as he depicts Leo XIII. as willingly perpetuating the miser-
ies of unfortunate Poland — as playing the game of a petty
politican, and for the sake of a mere “ dream.” The Civiltd
Cattolica did not think that a notice of this ebullition would
compromise its dignity ; and since that Roman periodical
is as excellent a guide in matters of propriety, as it is in
those of fact, we shall imitate its course, so far as to con-
dense its argumentation (2). If the curious student would
peruse the five large volumes which contain the authentic
records of the relations between the cabinets of the Vatican
and St. Petersburg, during the first fifteen years of the
Leonine pontificate, he would find that each page of those
records gives the lie to Professor Geffcken, and to the few
German Catholics whose foolish zeal for the Triple Alliance
led them to endorse his ravings. In these volumes w*e have ,
all the instructions given by the Pontiff to the Polish and ^

(1) See our Vol v., p. 101.

(2) In the numbers for Dec. 17, 1892, and Jan. 7, 1898.

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STUDIES IN CHUBCH HISTORY.

Kussian bishops, and all the correspondence with the Rus-
sian government, etc. Among the results of the Leonine
policy toward Russia, we find provisions made for many
vacant dioceses ; advantages gained for the Catholics of the
Caucasus ; an agreement in 1882 which was of great benefit
to the Catholic seminaries in the empire, as well as to the
Ecclesiastical Academy in St. Petersburg ; and a formal
promise, made on the part of tlie Russian government on
Dec. 24, 1882, by Boutenieff, its charge cT affaires , that the
persecuting decrees of 1865 would be suppressed. In 1890,
Leo XIII. addressed to the newly-appointed bishops of
Poland, to those prelates who are represented by Geffcken
as creatures of a cowardly and self-seeking policy on the
part of the Pontiff, an exhortation to defend to their utmost
the rights of the Church, to work for the prosperity of their
flocks, and to promote harmony with the civil authorities
when the imperial laics were not contrary to the laws of the
Church . Certainly this record is not that of a Pontiff who,
as the infamous Crispi asserted, “ would have sacrificed
not one, but ten Polands, in order to wiii the friendship of
the czar ” (1).

(1) Thus in an interview for the New York Herald cited by T’Serclaes, loc. cif., Vol. 1..
p. 503.

One of the most salient events of Russian history during the pontificate of Leo XIII.
was the oppression of the Jewish subjects of the autocrat— a persecution which was far
more bitter than any which the children of Israel have suffered elsewhere in our day, but
which American Protestants generally feign to ignore, since it was principally the work of
that bitter foe of the Holy See, Pobiendonostzev, the procurator of the Holy Synod and
practical Pope of Holy Russia. Arnold White, in his recent work ou the Modern Jew
which we have already quoted, is but too willing to discover palliatives for the Russian
tyranny. He insists that not only is the confinement of the Jews in the fifteen provinces of
Western Russia known as the Pale, and In the Polish provinces, an act of consummate
statesmanship ; but that no other policy is compatible with the development of Holy Rus-
sia on national lines. The Polish Jews are phenomenally prolific. For a hundred years
they have multiplied ns no people on earth have multiplied ; Russian statesmen of to-day,
when reflecting on this fact, are compelled to regard themselves as trustees forapeasantry
numbering 100,000,000 souls who are intellectually undeveloped and as backward in civil-
ization as were the English of the seventeenth century. The Russian peasant, especially
when drunk, falls an easy prey to the astute and temperate Oriental race, which exploits
his vices and plays with ease upon his superstitions and his prejudices for the purpose of
gain. It must he remembered, moreover, that the peasants, although ignorant and credu-
lous, are industrious, faithful, and devoted to the Czar. The Jews, on the other hand, are
cosmopolitan ; Russian neither in blood, religion, nor instinct. It is, according to Mr.
White, a sober statement of fact that, if all careers in the Russian Empire were thrown
open to the Jews, not a decade would pass before the whole Russian administration would
be in their hands. “What Czar in his senses,11 asks Mr. White, “what sane Russian-

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POPS LEO xm. AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 291

CHAPTER Xm.

POPE LEO xm. AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. THE APOSTO-
LATE OF CARDINAL LAVIGEREE.

Among the innumerable efforts of the Roman Pontiffs to
procure the utter abolition of human slavery, a prominent
place will be assigned in history to the Encyclical In plurimis,
addressed by Leo XIII. to the bishops of Brazil on May 8,
1888. Having expressed his joy because of the many eman-
cipations with which the Brazilians had honored his
sacerdotal jubilee, five months previously, the Pontiff appeals
to the bishops to use every proper means to procure the
abolition of slavery in their country. He goes over the
ground alreacty traversed by Gregory XVI. in the bull In
Supremo Apostolatus Fastigio as he shows how the Church
ever opposed the nefarious traffic in human beings ; and
then he draws attention to the lamentable fact that ' while
there is no longer anjr importation of African slaves to any
of the American countries, the abominable trade, with all its

Minister would permit his country to commit suicide by ceding the civil administration to>
a Jewish minority? England does not invest the Bengali with power in India because be-
passes difficult examinations with the greatest ease Yet this Is precisely what is involved
In the antidotes of education so glibly described by Anglo-Saxon doctrinaires, who con-
demn Russia, without understanding the difficulties with which she has to deal, but who
do not treat their own racial problems on abstract principles.” Mr. White insists that the
rich Jewish bankers who took the Russian loan are largely responsible for the fact that the
Russians now deny on the one hand the existence of any serious grievances on the part of
the Israelites in Russia, and assert on the other hand, that the nd ministrati ve regulations,
which are put in force are no more than are needed to effect the separation of the Orthodox
Russian from the descendants of the enemies of Christ. " If a tithe of the unanswered'
charges made against the Russian Government in respect of their anti-Semitic policy were
true, the attitude of the great Jewish banking houses in their financial dealings with Rus-
sia would be incomprehensible. No one could have conceived it possible that, in 1894,
not long after the time of the Guild-hall meeting and of the appearance of Darkest Russia,,
the richer Hebrew banks of the West would consent to supply the persecutor of their race
with funds, partly to be employed in paying the administration that humiliates, debases,,
and oppresses their co-rellgionists.” As was well remarked bv M. W. Hazeltine in a review
of White’s work published in the New York Sun , the Jewish bankers, before lending
money to Russia, might have imposed upon the Czar’s Ministers such conditions as would
secure for the Jews of the Pale some immunity from needlessly hostile treatment at the
bands of the officials and adequate protection from the equally hostile peasantry. But the
Russian loan was taken by Jewish capitalists, and Mr. White was told at St. Petersburg by
reliable persons in the administrative sphere that no private conditions were made such
as might ameliorate the lot of the wretched Jews of Russia.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

horrors, still flourishes in the Dark Continent : “ According
to the testimony of reliable travellers in Africa, at least 400,000
persons are dragged into slavery every year, and one half of
that number perish on their way to the markets.” During
his entire pontificate, Leo XIII. continually thought of
Africa, the horrors of its slave trade, and the dangers for
European civilization which are even now, perhaps, prepar-
ing in those regions. He realized well the truth of the warn-
ing pronounced by Cardinal Lavigerie in the Gesu at Rome,
shortly before the publication of the letter to the Brazilians :
“ During the last hundred years there has been working in
those regions (the Soudan) a social and religious transform-
ati on, towhich Europe ha s obstinately closed her eyes, but
which will very soon threaten the shores of the Mediterra-
nean. That wave of invasion which ingulfed this Rome
herself and all her empire, fifteen centuries ago, will not be
the last in history. If the work now begun in Africa is
allowed to progress, there will be an invasion from that land
no less terrible than that of the Huns, Vandals, and other bar-
barians. Strange phenomenon! Mohammedanism seems
io be preparing in Europe and in Asia for its last sleep,
while in Africa it is renewing its strength in blood. The
danger is nearer than you think. Believe an old pilot, who
knows the shoals and tempests of barbarism.” Like the
many Popes of the olden time who spent the greater part
cf their Pontificates in preparing those victories over Islam
which were to enable Christian Europe to enjoy some more
centuries of political existence, Leo XIII. would have warred
on Mohammedan Africa — but with the weapons of the Gos-
pel. Through the indomitable energy of Cardinal Lavi-
gerie, one feature of the desired crusade was soon to be seen
in full career ; the grand archbishop of Carthage was to
obey, to the letter, the instructions which His Holiness gave
to him on Oct. 17, 1888 : “ We have given you a grand
and arduous task ; you must oppose all your courage and all
your energy to the reign of slavery on African soil. You
liave undertaken, with an ardor that manifests your great-
ness of soul, a work in which the salvation of men is at
stake.” The names of Leo XIII. and Cardinal Lavigerie

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are not to be separated, when the historian glorifies the
anti-slavery crusade which the latter organized ; as His
Eminence wrote to the anti-slavery committees on July 22,
1890 : “ I have simply obeyed ; it is to the Supreme Pontiff
that belongs all the honor of this campaign.”

Charles Lavigerie was born at Bayonne, on October 31,
1825. As he himself expressed the idea, he was a Basque,
“ and therefore could be obstinate when necessary.” He soon
manifested an inclination for the priesthood ; and when, in his
fifteenth year, his father presented him as a candidate to the
bishop of Bayonne, he replied to the question as to why he
wished to enter the sacerdotal state, that he wanted to be a
country pastor. Admitted to the Preparatory Seminary of
Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, in Paris, he had as companions
Langenieux, Foulon, La Tour d’ Auvergne ; and his master was
Dupanloup. In 1843 he entered the Seminary of Saint-Sul-
pice, and was ordained in 1849 by Mgr. Sibour. In 1853 he
received the doctorate in theology at the Sorbonne, and wiis
made professor of Latin Literature at the flcole des Carmes.
In 1854 he was appointed adjunct professor of Ecclesiasti-
cal History in the Sorbonne, and in 1857 he became titular
of the same chair ; among his colleagues were Maret, Gratry,
and Freppel. But the Abbe Lavigerie taught history only
for a brief period ; he was soon summoned to tasks which
were to constitute him a maker of history. In 1856 he was
chosen director of the Work of the Eastern Schools, founded
in 1855 under the auspices of such men as Lenormant, Oza-
nam, Montalembert, Gagarin, De Falloux, and De Broglie,
for the promotion of Catholic interests in the Levant ;
and his professorial duties did not prevent his devoting
much time to collecting funds for this noble enterprise.
When the Syrian massacres of 1859 and ’60 occurred, he col-
lected over three million francs for the sufferers, and him-
self departed for Syria to superintend the distribution of the
offerings. At Beyrout he established an orphan asylum for
four hundred girls, under the care of the Sisters of Charity ;
and at Zahleh an asylum for boys, which he confided to the
Jesuits. Eighteen Catholic bishops of the East .afterward
sent an address to the Supreme Pontiff, attributing to the

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director of the Work of the Eastern Schools the greater
part of the benefits which French charity had conferred
upon their flocks. In 1861 the position of Auditor of the
Rota for France being vacant, Pius IX. tendered it to the
Abbe Lavigerie ; and for a year and a half he was enabled to
familiarize himself with the details of the pontifical admin-
istration, and to perfect his knowledge of Italian, which was
to be, at Algiers and at Tunis, the language of many of his
future diocesans. However, the director of the Work of the
Eastern Schools did not forget the child of his predilection ;
indeed, he had accepted the auditor^hip only on condition
that it should not interfere with his interest in Oriental
Christianity, and that he should be allowed to form a branch
of the Work in the Eternal City. He was constant in his
endeavors to induce the Catholics of the West to imitate the
solicitude of Pius IX., who had just then established a
Special Congregation of the Propaganda for Oriental Affairs ;
appointed a consultor of this new Congregation, he organ-
ized at Civita Yecchia a committee to further the interests
of the Bulgarians. In 1863 Mgr. Lavigerie was named bish-
op of Nancy. Pius IX. would have consecrated him, but,
being prevented by sickness, he delegated the function to
Cardinal Villecourt.

Mgr. Lavigerie was bishop of Nancy, when, in November,
1866, he received a letter from Marshal MacMahon, then
governor-general of Algeria, begging permission to present
his name to the emperor, Napoleon III., for the then vacant
see of Algiers. The prelate replied : “ Having reflected
maturely, and having prayed for light from God as to my
answer to the unexpected offer of Your Excellency, I now
express myself in all frankness. I would never have volun-
tarily entertained the thought of quitting a diocese which I
dearly love, and in which I have begun numerous works ; and
if Your Excellency had requested me to accept any diocese
more important than that of Nancy, my reply would be a
negative one. But I entered upon the episcopate as upon a
work of sacrifice. You offer me a painful and laborious
mission, an episcopal see in every way inferior to my present
position, and which entails upon me an abandonment of all

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I hold most dear ; and you think that I, better than another,
can fulfil its duties. A Catholic bishop, my dear Marshal,
can make but one reply to such a proposition. I accept the
dolorous sacrifice ; and if the emperor appeals to my devo-
tion, I shall not hesitate, cost me what it may.” By a Bull
of July 25, 1866, Pius IX. erected the diocese of Algiers into
an archbishopric, giving to it as suffragans the newly created
sees of Oran and Constantine. Mgr. Lavigerie entered upon
his archiepiscopal duties on May 16, 1867. His experience
as director of the Work of the Eastern Schools had con-
vinced the archbishop that the absence of a Christian spirit
in the administration of Algeria accounted for the slow
progress of French influence in the colony. And in his eyes
Algeria was merely the gate though which Divine Providence
was to send the means whereby to convert and civilize two
hundred millions of barbarians. In his first pastoral letter
he wrote : “ To render Algerian soil the cradle of a grand,
generous, and Christian nation — in a word, of another France,
daughter and sister of our own, happy irr marching in the
paths of justice and honor by the side of the mother-country ;
to spread around us, with that ardent initiative which is the
gift of our race and of our faith, the true light of the civili-
zation of which the Gospel is the source and the law ; to
gather Northern and Central Africa into the life of Christen-
dom ; such, in the designs of God and in the hopes of our
country and of the Church, is your providential destiny.”
Twenty years had not elapsed when the author of this
language resuscitated the ancient see of Carthage, excited
all Europe in favor of the slaves of the Dark Continent,
established his apostolic missionaries around the Great
Lakes, and received from the Supreme Pontiff the title of
Primate of Africa.

Probably the happiest, certainly the most consoling, day
of the apostolic life of Mgr. Lavigerie was that on which the
Homan Pontiff revived the primatial see of St. Cyprian, and,
after twelve centuries of interruption, restored the glorious
tradition of the Councils of Carthage (1). But very different

(1) It Is not strange that Mgr. Lavigerie should have entertained the thought of writing
the history of this ancient Church. His idea was to adapt the work of Morcelli, Africa

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are the circumstances surrounding the present Church of
Carthage from those which influenced its ancient prelates.
In our day the irreconcilable enemy of that Church and of
civilization is Islamism ; and to combat this enemy the new
archbishop bent all his energies. He was the first Algerian
prelate to make any serious efforts in this direction. The
French Government had hitherto opposed all attempts to
convert the Mohammedans ;even to-day it assumes the entire
expense of their worship ; and under the empire and the
royalty it went so far as to compel the Kabyles to the strictest
observance of their religious precepts, even organizing and
subsidizing the pilgrimages to Mecca, although it prohibited
the bishops of Algiers from acceding to the entreaties of the
Kabyles to establish Sisters of Charity among them. The
arrival of Mgr. Lavigerie in Africa found in full force this
ultra-protection of the Mohammedan cult on the part of the
colonial authorities ; they ever cherishing the illusory hope
of creating an “Arab kingdom” devoted to France, and
separating as much as possible the Europeans from the ab-
origines. To this system the archbishop opposed that of
assimilation, a progressive fusion of colonists and natives in
a French nationality ; and since such a project could not be
realized so long as the Arabs were Mussulmans, he openly
declared his design to prepare their conversion to Christian-
ity. And this preparation was accompanied by no preach-
ing or discussion ; it consisted in devoted and gratuitous care
of the sick, and in giving a rudimentary education and a
taste for manual labor to such children as parents would
consign to the care of the White Fathers. Twenty-four years
after Mgr. Lavigerie collected his first Arab orphans, and es-
tablished them in villages created expressly for them, his biog-
rapher (1) found them and their children “ perfectly faithful
to our faith and our customs ; around them the Mussulmans,
who sought the villages because of the charities of which
these were the centre, had become less fanatical, more like

Christiana , and to bring it to the level of more recent archa?ological discoveries. And
since his innumerable occupations prevented his undertaking the task, be entrusted it to
F. Toulotte, a learned missionary of his Congregation. ; and it is now very nearly completed.

(l)TbeAbbd Felix Klein, in his Cardinal Lavigerie and IHs Labors in Africa.
Paris, 1890.

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nnto ourselves, and full of confidence in our priests.” Let
us see how these first fruits of the faith were gathered. In
1867, the year of our prelate’s arrival in Africa, a frightful
famine ravaged Algeria, and in a few months a fifth of the
indigenous population had perished. The government tried
to hide the state of affairs, although it secretly distributed
some scanty relief ; but the archbishop broke the cruel si-
lence, and sent an appeal not only to the faithful of France,
but to those of other countries, and abundant alms were soon
available for the victims. But there were many orphans to
be gathered in, and to be endowed with some substitute for
the guardians whom they had lost, or by whom they had
been abandoned. Very soon Mgr. Lavigerie became the
father of nearly two thousand of these derelict children ; he
refused not one of those who voluntarily came to him, or
who were brought to him by his White Fathers. Having
saved their lives, he now proposed to give them such a
training as would enable them to earn their living in a civil-
ized manner, and would permit them to judge between
Christianity and Islamism. This project was a flinging down
of the gauntlet to the party of the “ Arab kingdom,” whose
ideas were followed by the military administration. Imme-
diately, the pretended Arabopliilists prevailed on Marshal
MacMahon to order the prelate to return the orphans to
their tribes ; whereupon the apostolic bishop thus protested :
“ You order us, Marshal, to hand over to the bestial passions
of their co- religionists these defenceless children, these
orphans who were abandoned by all and given over to death,
but whom the charity of French Christians enabled our
priests and Sisters to save at the cost of twenty of their
own lives (owing to the typhus caught from their charges.)
A thousand times better would it have been had they been
left to perish. And this horror is represented to you as
necessary ! But it shall not be effected without my solemn
protest to the entire world. I would have given them up
to their parents, their natural tutors ; but I am their father
and protector, since their fathers and mothers do not exist.
They belong to me, for I have preserved their lives. Force
alone can take them from their refuge ; and if it is employed.

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my episcopal heart will emit such a cry that the authors of
the crime will experience the indignation of all those who
deserve the name of men and of Christians.” These words
of a stricken father evoked an outburst of sympathy through-
out France, and the Supreme Pontiff sent him a brief of
praise and encouragement. But Mgr. Lavigerie was not
content with mere protests: he appealed personally to
Napoleon IIL ; and on May 28, 1868, the Moniteur pub-
lished a letter of the Minister of War, which announced
that the Government “ never had intended to restrict his
episcopal rights, and that every latitude would be allowed
Mgr. Lavigerie to extend and improve the refuges in w hich
the prelate’s love exercised itself in succoring the orphan,
the aged, and the widow.”

It often becomes the duty of the Algerian, like all other
missionaries among the heathen, to baptize infants at the
hour of death, and thus send them to heaven, without
informing the parents, and without the permission of
the civil administration. But, says the biographer of
Mgr. Lavigerie, this is the sole “ abuse ” which can be
laid to the account of the clericals in their interference
with the natives, and it produces no consequences on this
earth. However, very precise and severe rules define the
duty of the clergy in all that concerns the baptism of
heathens and Islamites. The diocesan statutes inculcate
that “ no Jewish or Mussulman infant shall be baptized
without the express permission of the parents.” The only
exception is for such infants as are in evident danger of
death, and for the orphans adopted by the missionaries or
by the Christian colonists. And in the last case every pru-
dential precaution is taken to prove that the child is really
abandoned by its family, that it enjoys the necessary liberty,
and has received the necessary instruction. Even in the case
of a subject who has attained the legal age -of majority, the
authorization of the bishop is requisite for the baptism, and
is given only when the probable durability oi the conversion
is assured. Mgr. Lavigerie always insisted that it would
be folly— aye, a crime — to excite the fanaticism ot the Mus-
sulman population by an unwise proselytism. He opined

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that " it is not necessary to be a priest, it is enough to be a
man, to cause one to desire the enfranchisement of the
fallen denizens of Northern Africa; and while the civil
authorities deprive the indigenous peoples of their arms, of
their power, and of their traditions, we priests try to calm
them, to mollify their chagrin by the exercise of charity.
We teach their children ; we heal their wounded and nurse
their sick ; we succor their poor ; we have for them only
words of kindness. We do not obtain hasty and imprudent
conversions, which are mere preludes to apostasy ; but
rather a certain preparation, without shocks or danger, for
a transformation of the African world. The seed is sown ;
we who may not gather the crop will have our reward in
having served the cause of humanity and of God.”

The most important work of Mgr. Lavigerie tin Africa
was the creation of the band of Algerian missionaries popu-
larly know as White Fathers. The astonishing progress of
their apostolate was evident on the occasion of the first
modern Council of Carthage. Children from their schools
rendered the liturgical chants which accompanied the con-
secration of the primatial church ; it was in their seminary,
educating a hundred students, that the Council was held.
Here were seen some of the missionaries who first traversed
the Great Lakes and evangelized Ouganda. One White
Father had for years directed the mission of Zanzibar, and
had organized and accompanied apostolic caravans into East
Africa. One had been military chaplain in the heart of
Tunis; another came on horseback from Ghardaja in the
Mzab. There was the superior of the establishment at
Malta, where negro boys are taught medicine and surgery,
that they may afterward gratuitously attend on their com-
patriots. This same priest had previously been a professor
in the Seminary of St. Anne at Jerusalem, where the White
Fathers are preparing a new Greek clergy in the interests
of unity. There could be seen several Fathers from the
summits of the Grand Kabylia ; or one who directed a
novitiate in Brussels ; or one who attended to the affairs of
his congregation in the capital of Christendom. This
admirable society was founded in 1868, when the archbishop,

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having saved his orphans from famine, was cogitating how
he could educate them, and maintain them in fidelity to
their new religion and their new country. One day the
Abbe Girard, the superior of the Seminary of Algiers, pre-
sented to the anxious prelate three students who were
desirous of devoting themselves to the special service of the
natives. “ With the help of God,” said the abbe, “ this will
be the beginning of the work you have desired to effect.”
The novitiate to which the candidates were assigned soon
received many aspirants. One of these, already a priest,,
presented his credentials ; and when the archbishop handed
him his faculties, he found that, instead of the ordinary
iormula, the prelate had written : “ Visum pro martyr io ”
(endorsed for martyrdom). “ Do you accept? ” asked Mon-
seigneur. “ It was for that I came here,” replied the priest.
In time the White Fathers were exempted from the
jurisdiction of the ordinary, and subordinated directly to
the apostolic-delegate for the Sahara and Soudan. The
missionaries soon had their own revenues independent of
the diocese of Algiers ; and their own charges as well, which
each one tries to lighten, “ by submitting to privation, or by~
undergoing the humiliations necessary to procuring the
means of living.” In a General Chapter of all the mission-
aries of the new society, held in October, 1874, for the elec-
tion of its first superiors, Mgr. Lavigerie was unanimously
elected superior-general ; but as he declined the position,
Father Deguerry was chosen, with the title, however, of
vicar-general during the life of the beloved founder. One
special object the White Fathers have constantly in view,
and without it they would lose their very reason of being.
They were designed for the exclusive service of the heathen
and Mussulmans of Africa. For this reason it is their
characteristic to conform to the habits of the natives in all
externals — in language, dress, and food. “ Love these in-
fidels,” said their founder ; “ heal their wounds, do every
good to them. Then they will give you their affection, after-
ward their * confidence, and finally their souls.” To see
these sons of civilization made Africans for love of Africa
must excite our admiration. As they guide their steeds.

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through the solitudes of the Sahara or the rocky passes of
Kabylia, no one would take them for European priests.
Nor would the illusion vanish, if we were to observe them
as they lightly dismount, enter a tent, squat with native
impassibility on the mat of palm or alfa ; conversing in
Arabic with tlieir hosts, showing every interest in their
wants, seriously explaining for them the innumerable mas-
ses of waste-paper with which the administrative and judi-
cial authorities persist in endowing them ; instructing the
children in the three R’s ; exciting the admiration of the
elders by their knowledge of the Koran ; distributing little
presents ; sharing the repast of couscous and fresh water ;
and, when about to depart, exchanging the graceful Arabic
salutation with their friends. Quite picturesque, a super-
ficial observer would remark ; but the reality is not very
agreeable, the Abbe Klein will remind him, “ if one has a
keen sense of smell, or when one has journeyed for half a
day to sup on couscous. Remember, too, that the White
Fathers adopt the external habits of the people even in
their private lives ; for example, at night they stretch on the
ground, wrapped in their bimious ; although in their own
houses they may rest on a plank, and if ill, on a mattress.”
Touched by their virtue, the Mohammedans often say to
them : “ The other Roumis [ Romans, Christians ] will, of
course, be damned ; but you will enter Paradise.”

And now a few words on the anti-slavery agitation insti-
tuted by Mgr. Lavigerie, and its ^results. On May 24, 1888,
Cardinal Lavigerie ( he had been elevated to the purple in
1882) presented to His Holiness twelve secular priests from
various dioceses of French Africa, twelve White Fathers,
twelve Christian Kabyls of Algeria, and twelve negroes of
Central Africa whom the missionaries had purchased from
slavery and converted to Christianity. In an eloquent and
touching reply to the cardinal’s address, the Pontiff said :
“ It is upon you, Lord Cardinal, that we chiefly rely for
success in the arduous missions of Africa. We know your
active and intelligent zeal, we know what you have already
accomplished, and we believe that you will not pause until
your great enterprises have triumphed.” Encouraged and

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excited by these words of the Father of the Faithful, Sis
Eminence wrote to Mgr. Brincat, procurator in Paris for the
African missions : “ I am about to go to Paris, to tell what

I know of the crimes which desolate the interior of our
Africa, and then to put forth a great cry, — one of those cries
which stir the depths of the soul in all who are still worthy
of the name of men and of Christians. ... I know not where
I shall speak ; but I do know that in demanding an end to
such infamous excesses, in proclaiming the great principles
of humanity, liberty, equality, and justice, I shall find in
France and in the Christian world no intelligence or heart
to refuse me its aid.” Philanthropists and politicians will
follow their usual course in claiming the glory of the great
movement begun at the Conference of Brussels to engage
the honor of Christian nations in a unanimous effort to ter-
minate the slave-hunts of Africa ; but the fact will remain
that hitherto, if we except some generous tentatives of
the king of Belgium, neither philosphers, politicians, nor
journalists had advocated the cause of the persecuted natives
of Africa in anything like a serious manner. Cardinal
Lavigerie held his first anti-slavery conference at Paris, in
the Church of St. Sulpice. He then proceeded to London ;
and so effective was his appeal, and so powerful the agita-
tion resulting, that the English Government asked the Bel-
gian monarch to take the initiative by requesting a confer-
ence of the powers at Brussels. Here was another favorable
opportunity for the cardinal to preach his crusade ; and
accordingly in the Church of Ste. Gudule he demanded the ac-
tive co-operation of the authorities of the Congo State. After
this sermon five hundred volunteers placed themselves at the
cardinal’s disposal for the defence of the negroes of the
Upper Congo. Illness prevented the attendance of the pre-
late at the Catholic Congress of Fribourg-en-Brisgau, but
he sent to it a lengthy and impressive appeal describing
the slave-trade in Tabora and Oujiji, the two great centres
of the German- African regions ; he suggested the formation
of a German anti-slavery society after the style of those
founded in France and Belgium. An anti-slavery committee
*was soon formed at Cologne, and all that was Catholic in

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Germany joined in the great crusade. After an imperative,
but brief rest from labor, the cardinal perfected the French
Anti-Slavery Society, exclusively national, but designed to
keep up relations with the similar associations in other
countries, and with the various congregations of missionaries
laboring in Africa (1). Other countries soon fell into the
line of march indicated by the cardinal. Her Catholic Ma-
jesty of Spain became protectress of the work in her do-
minions, and Canovas del Castillo accepted the presidency.

In Portugal, the great explorer Serpa Pinto organized a
branch, the king becoming protector, and his second son
head of the central committee. In Italy, a national com-
mittee was founded at Home under the direct protection of
Pope Leo XIII., and having Prince Rospigliosi for presi-
dent, and Prince Altieri for vice-president. Cardinal Lavi-
gerie was greatly aided in his endeavors in Italy by the zeal
of his eminent brethren of the Sacred College, the ordinaries
of Naples (2), of Capua, and of Palermo. After a final con-
ference at Milan, the cardinal, when about to return to his
diocese, wrote to M. Keller, begging the members of all
the anti-slavery committees to continue his work of nourish-
ing the zeal of Europe in the cause to which they had con-
secrated themselves. He had accomplished the first part
of his design by publishing to the world the horrors of the
slave traffic ; now it remained to abolish it. His mission had
not been comprehended by those who imagined that he had
aspired to an immediate abolition of domestic slavery among
all the Mussulman populations : what he demanded of all
men of heart was to aid in abolishing the hunt for slaves in
Africa, and the sale of slaves in the Turkish markets. There

(1) Its Council of Administration bad M. Keller for president ; and among the members 1
of the Council were Chesnelong, General de Charette, the Count de Mun, Wallon, and
Mgr. Brincat. A council de haul patronage was Instituted for the defence of its cause in
political assemblies and in the press; It counted among its members Jules Simon and
Lefevre-Pontalis.

(2) The inhabitants of Naples were especially moved by the cardinal’s eloquence. Car-
dinal Sanfellce, the archbishop, wishing to contribute to the collection, and being impov-
erished by his charities, handed In the rich pectoral cross which had been given him by
the city in recognition of his noble conduct during the cholera, the Jewels of which were
worth more than two thousand dollars. But Cardinal Lavlgerie wrote to the Corriere di
Napoli that he would regatd the acceptance of the gift as a sacrilege, and that therefore he
sent it to the office of the Journal to be raffled for, so that the fortunate winner might
enjoy the sweet satisfaction of restoring the souvenir to its holy owner.

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is not now on earth, he concluded, a work more holy or more
necessary. At a conference held in the grand amphitheatre
of the Sorbonne on February 10, 1889, Jules Simon, the cele-
brated republican philosopher and orator, while expressing
his indignation at the public apathy toward African misery,
thus vented his admiration for the White Fathers and their
illustrious chief : “ The spectacle afforded by these mission-
aries would console one somewhat for these miseries, if
consolation were possible. . . . The more we realize the depth
of these horrors, the more must we express our profound
gratitude to these young men who abandon their parents,
friends, and almost their ideas and feelings, leaving all that
is dear behind them, to confront such evils and assuage such
woes. Here, gentlemen, we are merely echoes : we come
simply to repeat, and- weakly, the words of a man of large
heart. . . . He will persevere, and will amass treasures of pity
in compassionate souls; he will teach humanity to know
itself ; and perhaps he will yet perform a work more mag-
nificent than the destruction of slavery — the conversion of
the European powers to the idea that they can do better
than devour one another, and can actuate the possibility,
for the men of our day, of serving with one heart, in the
presence of God, the sacred cause of humanity and justice.”
In 1868 Mgr. Lavigerie had urged on the Holy See his
appointment as apostolic-delegate for the immense region
extending from Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli, to the missions
of Senegal and the Guineas on the south, to the Atlantic on
the west, and to the Fezzan on the east ; for he realized that
the French possessions of Algeria and Tunis could be con-
nected by means of the Sahara and Soudan with those of
Senegal. His design was to wrest the Sahara from barbar-
ism, that it might cease to be a refuge for slavery, and a
nursery of rebellion against France. The security of the
French colonies, as well as the interests of religion, demand
the sacrifices necessary for the reclamation of the Sahara ;
and it will not suffice to subjugate the Touaregs. A civ-
ilized training must be given to these tribes who now live
only by assassination, pillage, and the sale of human beings.
Who can effect this wonderful change? Our cardinal

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Teplied that it will be worked by his White Fathers, six of
whom had then already been martyred in the Sahara ; and
by the Brothers of the Sahara, an organization then being
trained at Biskra — becoming acclimated, learning the lan-
guages of the desert, and studying its medical needs as well
as its pharmaceutical possibilities. These Brothers were to
give life to the waste by a revelation of the lost sources of
fresh water, and by such agricultural ventures as experience
would prove to be profitable in such a climate. They would
instruct the children and nurse the sick ; they would receive
the slaves who might flee to them, or who might be delivered
by the soldiers of France.

Cardinal Lavigerie was not only a man of action, but a
savant The importance of what he wrote, and the manner
in which he wrote, caused him to be mentioned for the French
Academy. We allude to this fact simply because it furnishes
an opportunity of adducing an excellent illustration of his
character. In 1884, having been invited by the perpetual
secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres
to introduce his candidature in that section of the Institute,
he replied by the following letter : “ Owing to a serious ill-
ness, from which I have scarcely recovered, I have been able
to reply only by telegraph to the flattering communication
sent me in your name. I wish now to make up for the forced
laconicism of that first answer, and to express at least my
gratitude to those members of your Academy who have
initiated my candidature. I desire above all to explain a
reserve which may have surprised you. I appreciate the
rule which obliges all candidates to solicit directly the votes
of the Academy. It is but proper that they should show
the high value they attach to these suffrages. But two
personal reasons cause me to recoil from this task. The first
is a total absence of justificatory reasons ; the only one I
could allege would be my own inclination, which, in a case
where science and results are concerned, is an insufficient
recommendation. The second reason is of a still more
delicate nature. After all, I am a poor missionary ; my
other titles derive all their value from that fact. Now, while
a missionary must receive every thing, because he has nothing,

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STUDIES IN CHUBCH HISTORY.

there are some things for which he must not ask. In order
to 'make an inroad into barbarism, I have had to surround
myself with a legion of apostles. In the struggle going on
in the interior of our Africa, already eleven of these have
spilled their blood, and others have succumbed to fatigue
and sickness. What would be said of me, if while my sons
seek only the palms of martyrdom, I should wave those of
the Institute ? Were I to yield to the seductive temptation,
I should blush with shame. It is better to leave me in my
Barbary.”

However glorious it may be for France that the immense
majority of missionaries in Asia and Africa is formed of
Frenchmen, the zeal of Leo XIII. soon perceived that it was
only proper for other Catholics to bear something like a just
proportion of labor in the cause of heaven. Therefore the
bishops of Belgium were told that they should encourage
priests to join the missions in Belgian Congo ; and since
Germany had established a “ protectorate ” over a large por-
tion of African territory, the Pontiff wrote to the archbishop
of Cologne, asking him “ to enquire diligently among the
German clergy, as to whether there were not any of them
who would appear to be called by God to evangelize the
unfortunate peoples of Africa.” The pontifical appeal was
heeded ; many Belgian and German priests entered on the
new apostolate ; and very soon both Belgian and German
military officers reported, to the great scandal of the Prot-
estant element in their jurisdictions, that the new mission-
aries were “ excellent civilizing agents.” One of our Pontiff s
suggestions for the Christianization of the Dark Continent
was the establishment, as soon as practicable, of monasteries
of various orders ; he remembered the paramount influence
of the sons of St. Benedict in civilizing the barbarians of
Northern Europe in the early Middle Age ; and as a beginning,
a colony of Trappists fixed themselves in Belgian Congo, the
Pope himself giving 100,000 francs toward the defrayal of
their expenses. In 1890, Leo XIII. was encouraged by the
receipt of a letter which had been received by Cardinal
Lavigerie from Mwanga, king of Ouganda (1). This sover-

(1) “ Your Eminence and my great father. I, Mwanga, king of Ouganda, send a man

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POPE LEO Xin. AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 307

eign, who had been expelled from his dominions by the
Arabs, had taken the offensive, and being aided by such of
his subjects as were Catholics, had just reconquered his
inheritance, and from a bitter persecutor had become a
protector of the faith. Catholicism was progressing in every
sense in Ouganda, when, in 1892, the Protestant missionaries
induced the English East Airican Company to attack and
disperse the neophytes. Their villages were burnt, hundreds
were massacred, and their wives and children were sent
adrift to wander or perish among strangers ; the persecutors
openly avowing that they preferred Pagans or Mohammedans
to Catholics. However, in this case as in so many others,
the blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church ; for the
thousands of Ougandan Catholics were scattered only to be
the means of the conversion of many others. And in the
following year, the East Airican Company was compelled to
evacuate this region, authority therein devolving on Sir
Gerald Portal, an English Imperial Commissioner, who soon
showed that the Catholics might rely on his justice.

In 1890 there departed from Belgium the first of the anti-
slavery expeditions which were destined to carry succor to
Joubert (1), and to establish a long line of armed stations

to visit you. I write to tell you that I have returned to my kingdom. You knew that
when the Arabs defeated me, I fled to Bukumbl. Mgr. Livlnhac and his missionaries
treated me kindly. After four months the Christians sent for me. We fought for five
months. God blessed us, and we defeated the Arabs. Now I beg you to send priests to
teach the religion of Jesus Christ in the whole of Ouganda. I also ask you for some,
physicians, like those who went to UJijl. When they arrive, I shall give them a good
place. I have heard that our Father the Pope, the great head of religion, has sent you to
Europe to treat with the great ones concerning the abolition of slavery in Africa. As for
me. If the white men help me, I can aid them, and I can prevent the slave-trade in all the
country around the Nyanza. Deign to beg heaven to give me the strength to do good.
On my part, I pray God to bless all the works that you perform for His glory. Your s< n
Mwanoa, King of Ouganda .”

(1) “ What a heroic poem would be formed by the mere recitation of the gigantic works
performed in Africa under the inspiration of Leo XIII., and by the activity of Cardinal
Lavigerie ! One would need to depict the legions of missionaries attacking the Dark
Continent from all sides, creating centres of enlightenment, and attracting the ardent
sympathies of the natives. One would need to give a detailed narrative of th& efforts of
the Pope and the cardinal to protect, by a circle of steel, the still pagan regions of Africa
from the raids of the infamous traders in human flesh. One would need to describe the*
military heroism of Joubert. that Frenchman without fear, that Christian without stain,,
who alone resisted the assaults of the slave-traders for many years, that other St. Louis,,
who Is, as Captain Jacques said, le bon sergent de Dteu among the blacks to whom he
gives also material prosperity, the love of labor which eivf'zes the most degraded peoples,
the hope which consoles, and the faith which ennobles. All this should be shown in life,
in action, in combat, in suffering, and ever sustained by the spirit of God, unceasingly

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

which would serve as a barrier to the march of the slave-
traders. This expedition, commanded by a Belgian officer
named Hinck, was recalled before it could attain its object.
More fortunate than Hinck, Captain Jacques had the
Pontiff bless his sword, and in 1891 he destroyed the power
of the ferocious Wagagos, and after a wonderful march of
fifty-eight days, he reached the German station at Tabora
with a caravan of 2,000 men. Then occurred his rapid march
to the Tanganika, where his presence alone entailed the
dissolution of the army of Rumaliza, the most powerful Arab
of Oujiji, who was preparing to assail Joubert. Then
Jacques joined Joubert at St Louis de M’rumbi, having
arrived just in time to save him from the annihilatfbn
threatened by the slave-trade hordes who had surrounded
him. But the Arabs were not discouraged ; they constructed
a fort in front of Albertville, ravaged the neighboring dis-
tricts, and tried to reduce the Franco-Belgians and their
black allies by famine. While Jacques and Joubert were
awaiting succor from Belgium, another expedition was being
organized in that country, thanks to a public subscription,
and especially to a subscription from the veterans of the
Franco-Beige Pontifical Zouaves, to which noble body Jou-
bert had belonged. Leo XIII. signified his intention of
associating himself with this expedition by means of a
.contribution of 50,000 francs. Commanded by Captain
Descamps, this fourth Belgian private enterprise was a
success, the stations of the Tanganika becoming a formid-
able barrier to the Mohammedan slavers. In the Belgian
-territory of the Upper Congo, many deeds of heroism
were performed, notably that by Prince Henri de Croy,
when he destroyed a caravan of 1,200 Arabs, and thereby
delivered 307 slaves ; but the ’ civil administration of the
Congo State seemed to have hitherto shared with all other
civil Afro-European authorities the idea that the Arab in
Africa is invincible, and that his presence, at least in Central
Africa, is a necessary evil. To the intense indignation of
Leo XIII. and Cardinal Lavigerie, the administrators of

manifesting itself in the ardent words of Leo XIII., and in the furtcuac energy of the
cardinal.” TSkrclaes; Pope Leo XIII. ; His Life, and His Religious, Political,
and Social Action. Paris, 1894.

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 309

Independent Congo had concluded a treaty, in 1887, with
Tippo-Tip, recognizing him as vali of Stanley Falls, and
reconciling themselves to the idea that Nyangwe and Kass-
ongo were inexpugnable intrench’ments of slavery. How-
ever, in 1892 the Arabs of Tippo-Tip massacred the Hodister
expedition, and attacked M. Tobback, the Belgian agent at
Stanley Falls ;• whereupon Tobback, succored by Ohaltin,
undertook a vigorous campaign which resulted in the final
annihilation of the power of Tippo-Tip. Thus finally, by
means of the initiative of Leo XIII., the eloquence of
Lavigerie, the good will of King Leopold IL of Belgium,
and the valor of Belgian volunteers and soldiers, the
domination of the Arab slaver in Central Africa was over-
thrown. As though he realized that he was not destined
to behold the completion of the work that he had begun
and impelled on its road to full development, Cardi-
nal Lavigerie addressed the following words to the char-
itable in France and Belgium who had aided his projects :
“ I thank them all in the name of the poor slaves whose
restoration to life and liberty they have effected ; I thank
them, in the name of the devoted mothers, and- of the
dear little ones, who will not any more be separated, perhaps
to be barbarously massacred, perhaps to be sold in distant
regions ; I thank them in the name of religion, whose pro-
gress toward peace and security they have promoted ; I
thank them, finally, in the name of the missionaries, whose
lives they have protected, and whose regeneration and fructi-
fying labors they have seconded.” On Nov. 27, 1892, a few
months after he had written this token of the interest which
devoured him to the last, the great soul of Lavigerie went to
its eternal reward. From among the innumerable eulogies
which this death evoked, we select the following passages from
that presented by the Moniteur de Rome : “ A hundred years
from now, when the European tourist visits the white cities
of the Dark Continent, he will admire in their public squares
the twin-statues of Pope Leo XIII. and Cardinal Lavigerie.
To follow the reciprocal actions of the grand Pontiff and
of the great organizer of missionary work would be to under-
take a narrative of indefinite length. Without Leo XIIT.„

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

the primate of Africa would not have been a founder ; his
brow would not have been stamped with the seal of a creator ;
the works of his own initiation would have been developed
less fully and less rapidly, and his best and most daring
conceptions would not have been bom ; a century would not
have sufficed for the wonders which have been accomplished
in ten years. In the reciprocating motion between Home
and Carthage, all was grand ; the inspirations and the
accomplishments, the direction and the execution, the con-
ceiving intellect and the operating arm, the enjoining and
blessing Pontiff and the apostle-patriarch who drew from the
Vatican the force which filled the world with admiration.
History will not mention the cardinal without also speak-
ing of the Pope ; they will live together in the memory of
men. ... A great man is never so creative, his creations are
never so solid and far-reaching, as when his works are sanc-
tioned by a great Pope. From the beginning of their ac-
quaintance, Leo XIII. had discerned in the cardinal ‘ a man
who will deserve well of humanity.’ To counsel, to encour-
age, and to sustain Lavigerie was the constant idea of His
Holiness ; to use the cardinal for his own purposes was the
Pope’s noblest ambition. With what enthusiasm did not the
Pontiff speak of the archbishop of Carthage ? How confi-
dently Leo XIII. watched that illustrious career ! Neither
detractors, nor calumniators, nor reprovers could ever pre-
vent the Pope from blessing this grand man of action.”

CHAPTER XIV.

POPE LEO xm. AND THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN BELGIUM.

The theory of an “ independent morality,” that is, of a
morality derived from an absolute independence of all
“ religious dogmatic teaching,” has been, as we have had
frequent occasion to note, the pet dogmatism of the Free-
masonry of our day, which thus accentuated, as though such
emphasis was needed, its essential difference from the sys-
tem which proclaims that all social order is based on

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POPE LEO xm. AND EDUCATION IN BELGIUM.

811

revealed truth — on God and His Christ — Omnia instaurare
in Christo . On Jan. 26, 1879, at the ceremony of the conse-
cration of the Masonic Temple of the Amis Philanthropes in
Brussels, Brother Goblet d’ Aviella, knowing full well that his
words would be proclaimed immediately to the “ profane”
world, openly avowed that the time had come for the enforce-
ment of the “ independent morality ” on Catholic Belgium.
“When we laid the corner-stone of this temple (1877), I
observed, my brothers, that Masonry is the philosophy of
Liberalism, that is, the source from which the foes of all
prejudices and superstitions must procure their superior
principles of moral direction and political reconstruction.
. . . What question chiefly engages the attention of the gov-
ernment and the people of Belgium to-day ? It is that of a
reform of popular education — that lever, with which, as
a certain philosopher declared, mankind could be renovated.
To-day we are about to deprive revealed religion of that
right to teach morality which it has hitherto monopo-
lized in the public schools. •. . . If the Liberals wish to find
the true principles of education, let them come to our tem-
ples. On our walls they will see those principles written ;
in our works they will see those principles formulated.
Masonry teaches that in the moral just as in the physical
world, there are laws which are absolute, primordial, per-
manent, universal, and independent of all time and place
— independent of every sect and school, and destined to be
the foundation of every society which is rationally organ-
ized When Masonry proclaims these laws, it merely

conforms to the object for which it was instituted ; for this
object — as is known by all of you who have arrived at the
third degree — although it is hidden under the Biblical
superstitions of our Rituals, is simply the study of Nat-
ure ” (1). The confidence of Brother Goblet d’Aviella was
well-founded ; for in the elections of the previous May, the
Liberals had attained to power, and an entirely Masonic
cabinet, composed of such men as Frere-Orban (for Foreign
Affairs), Bara (for Justice), and Van Humbeeck (for the
Interior), swayed the destinies of Belgium. The Brethren

(1) Reported In the Cnurrier de Bruxelles , March 7, 1879.

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of the Dark Lantern in France, as we have seen, were firmly
entrenched ; the adepts in Holland, thanks to their ally, the
“ Society for the Public Welfare” (1), had just procured the
passage of a law which laicized all teaching of youth ; why
should not halcyon days now arrive for Belgian Masonry ? (2).

On Jan 21, 1879, the Venerable Brother, Van Humbeeck, in
his capacity as Minister of the Interior, introduced into the
Chambers the great desideratum of his order. The follow-
ing were the principal articles : Art. IV. “ Religious

teaching is left to the care of families and of the clergy of
the different religions. A place in the schools shall be as-
signed to the ministers of the various denominations for the
purpose of giving, after school hours, religious instruction
to such children as belong to their respective communions.”
Art. VI. “ The books used in the primary schools shall be
selected by the Conscil de Perfeetiormement, and shall be
approved (or rejected) by the government.” It was evident
that these provisions would be obnoxious to the immense

(1) This society was founded in 1784 by Nieuwenbysen. a Dutch Mennonlte pastor, “ with
the intention,” as his programme announced, “ of combatting, in children as well as in
adults, all the prejudices of superstition.” Its apparent Inoffensiveness rendered It an
admirable propaganda of Freemasonry, especially among the lower orders. See the
excellent work of M. de Moussac on The EducatUmal League , p. 9 and 234.

(2) Uuder the domination of the first Napoleon, Freemasonry, which had hitherto
flourished but poorly in Belgium, developed greatly ; but it attained to much larger pro-
portions when the Machiavellian Congress of Vieuna incorporated the Catholic Belgians
with the Hollanders. One of the chief re-organizers of Belgian Masonry was an apostate
priest named Saint-Martin, a counsellor of the Paris Court of Cassation, who had been
employed by Napoleon in many confidential missions in the Low Countries. None of the
Belgian Masons of those days had any sympathy for Belgian aspirations toward liberty ;
the union with Holland under the sceptre of a Protestant prince promised to favor their
game. A distinguished member of the Belgian parliament, Wq?ste, thus alluded to this
unpatriotic attitude of the Belgian Masons : ” When King William (of Holland) assumed a
hostile and aggressive attitude toward Catholicism, Masonry took gocd care not to espouse
the cause of the liberty of the Church against him. It proclaimed him ‘ the most enlight-
ened monarch in Europe/ It approved his expulsion of the Brothers of the Christian
Schools; his suppression of the freedom of teaching ; his foundation of the ‘ Philosophical
College * ; and one of the Masonic representatives in the States-General, Reyphins, ex-
claimed : ‘ It was necessary to take measures which would insure for Belgium in the
future an educated and enlightened clergy ; and the government therefore created the
Philosophical College. The government should not only watch over public instruction ;
it should direct it. seeing that the young are taught good principles, those which conform
to our habits ar d institutions.’ ” See the Anti-Catholic and Radical Evolution of the
Liberal Party . in the Revue Generate , Nov., 1876. It is worthy of note that while the
educational master-stroke of the Masons of Belgium was being prepared, these praters on
patriotism were drawing closer their relations with the German Lodges, through the me- 4
dlum of one of Bismarck's chief confidents, Bluntschli ; and this was precisely the time
when it was an open secret that the German chancellor was engineering the annexation of
Holland and at least a part of Belgium to the domain of the Hobenzollern. See the Bul-
letin of the Grand Orient of Belgium for 1874 artel 1875.

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POPE LEO XIIL AND EDUCATION IN BELGIUM. 31&

majority of the people, and that therefore in very many
places the Municipal Councils would find some means of re-
taining the olden order of things. To obviate this inconveni-
ence, a body of inspectors, to be appointed by the Minister
of Public Instruction, was created ; and to render the hold of
the government on the schools still more firm, there was to be
in each commune a School Committee, also of governmental
appointment. To Catholics of the great American Kepublic
who have come to regard the crying injustices of their Pub-
lic School System as a matter of course, this Masonico-
Liberal Belgian law of 1879 must naturally appear as com-
paratively a “ consummation devoutly to be wished ” in
their own " freest land on earth ” ; but the bishops and
clergy of Belgium, whose ancestors in the faith, ever since
the days of Clovis, had been accustomed to the hand-in-liaud
march of religious and secular education, regarded the Frere-
Orban law as the entering- wedge which would entail an ulti-
mate triumph of indifferentism. It would be the height of
rashness, therefore, to designate as excessively severe the
decision emitted concerning this law by the Belgian pre-
lates, after mature and conscientious reflection. This decis-
ion, as communicated to all the deans and pastors, declared :
Firstly, absolution was to be refused to all the teachers
and pupils of the secondary or Normal Schools. Secondly,
since the religious instruction given in the lay schools was
imparted by persons who had not received the canonical
commission from their bishops, said instruction was to be
regarded as schismatical ; and therefore said instructors had
incurred excommunication. Thirdly, absolution was to be
refused to all the instructors under the new regime, even to
those who gave no religious instruction in their schools ;
but as to the children frequenting the primary schools, their
tender age excused them from culpability, and they could
be admitted to the Sacraments, for the present (1). How-
ever, the prelates of Belgium had no intention of depriving
their youthful subjects of the benefits of secular education.
They called on their people to establish Catholic schools
immediately, leaving those of the government to its subsi-

(1) Thus tbe decision was summarized in the Gazette de Bruxelles , Sept. 1. 1879.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

dized and excommunicated servants. The organs of Belgian
Masonry did not affect to conceal their exultation when the
educational law of 1879 had been voted. On June 29, a
“ convent ” of the Belgian and Dutch adepts was held in
the Lodge Geldersche Brcederschctp of Arnehm ; and among
other ebullitions, the brother, Van Capelle, congratulated
the order on “ having accomplished a wort for which human-
ity thanked it ; it had put into the hands of a neutral State
a primary instruction which it had taken from the hands of
an intolerant clergy ” (1).

From the day when the educational law was proposed in
the Belgian Chambers, the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Frere-Orban, endeavored to procure from Pope Leo XIII.
an assurance that the Holy See did not share the indignation
manifested by the Belgian bishops in regard to that law.
When six months had elapsed, and the law had been voted,
the desired assurance had not been given ; therefore the
-disappointed Minister sought to make it appear that the
Vatican had contradicted itself, blaming the Belgian pre-
lates in the beginning, and afterward upholding them. But,
as Cardinal Nina, then the papal Secretary of State, told
the Belgian Minister to the Vatican, during the time when
the law was being discussed in the Chambers, “ the Holy
See had hoped, and to the last moment, that some amend-
ment would render the law less hateful to the Catholics ” ;
now that the law was being executed, however, His Eminence
declared that “ he could not hold the opinion of the Minister
for Foreign Affairs concerning the attitude of the Belgian
-clergy— he could not pronounce that attitude illegal or
Beditioiis.” Speaking of the Pastoral in which the Belgian
bishops, on June 12, 1879, had pronounced the censures of
the Church on all co-operators with the wicked law, the
cardinal declared that the doctrine contained in the docu-
ment was thoroughly orthodox ; and that the disciplinary por-
tion, in which provision was made for dispensations in cases
where the children would run no risk of spiritual injury,
was couched indeed in strong language, but in terms which
were perfectly justifiable. On three different occasions,

(1) The entire speech is published In the Masonic Chaine d' Union* Jan., 1880.

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POPE LEO xm. AND EDUCATION IN BELGIUM. 315

Leo XIII. wrote personally to King Leopold II. in reference
to the iniquitous enactment. In Aug., 1879, he begged His
Majesty “ to consider the disastrous effects of a law which
has justly and deeply shocked the Belgian Catholics, as
well as those who have charge of their religious interests.”
On Nov. 4, the Pontiff insisted that “ any bishop who tried
to fulfil his pastoral duties, let him be the most consum-
mately prudent of prelates, would inevitably find himself at
variance with a law which contradicts the principles of
Catholic doctrine ” ; and His Holiness adds that it is be-
cause of the evident iniquity of the law that all the bishops
of Belgium, u differing as they do in disposition, are so
unanimous in arranging measures to counteract the conse-
quences of the new legislation.” The Pope also reminds
the king that “ no real need called for such an enactment —
for a measure which was so utterly offensive to the immense
majority of His Majesty’s subjects ” On May 10, 1880, the
Pontiff tells the monarch that the Belgian bishops have
been forced to adopt extreme measures, because of “ the
grave danger threatening the souls of their peoples,” on
account of a law which was designed “ to undermine the
Catholic faith in Belgium, rather than to vindicate rights of
the State which no one had usurped.” And the king must
not forget, adds the Pope, that the bishops have accorded
numerous dispensations, and taken other measures cal-
culated to moderate the conflict — and all these things
were done in accordance with the counsel of the Holy See.”
In the face of these letters of the Pontiff, the Masonic
conscience of Frere-Orban allowed him to assert in the
parliament that Leo XIII. had disapproved of the conduct of
the Belgian prelates. This lie caused Cardinal Nina to
send to Archbishop (now Cardinal) Serafino Yannutelli, the
nuncio at Brussels, a despatch dated Nov. 11, 1879, in which
the supposed discord between His Holiness and the Belgian
episcopate was clearly denied. Frere-Orban refused to re-
ceive this despatch officially — an insult which was probably
meant to induce the nuncio to ask for his passports. How-
ever, as Yannutelli knew the mind of the Pontiff to be averse
to an open rupture of diplomatic relations with a Catholic

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STUDIES m CHURCH HISTORY.

sovereign, when such a catastrophe could possibly be avoided,,
he consented to withhold the document, without, however,
modifying its/contents in any way. In spite of this letter,
Frere-Orban made to the parliament a most impressive
denunciation of the bishops, as of men who were disobedient
to the Holy See. Then, in the name of the entire Belgian
hierarchy, Cardinal Dechamps, archbishop of Malines,
published a formal denial of the assertion, concluding with
the words, “ not only has the Holy Father uttered no word
of blame for the bishops of Belgium, but we know positively
— nous le savons de science certaine — that our adversaries will
wait in vain for such a word.” Nor did the Pontiff delay
in notifying the world that Frere-Orban had lied, although
of course, the papal language was polite, and restricted to
the mere necessary. In a Brief to His Eminence of Malines,
dated April 2, 3880, His Holiness said : “We wish to as-
sure you, with all our heart, that your manifestations of
devotion, of attachment to this Holy See, and of zeal for the
preservation of faith and piety in your country, have filled
us with consolation ; and that they even strengthen the
ties of paternal affection which have so long bound us to the
bishops, clergy, and laity of Belgium.” And the diplomatic
correspondence of Baron d’Anethan, the Belgian Minister
to the Vatican, shows that the Pope said to this envoy :
“ That alleged discord never existed. I am united com-
pletely with all the Belgian bishops ; there is but one Fold
and one Shepherd.” But the Masonic audacity of the Bel-
gian Foreign Minister was unaffected by shame. On April
7, 1880, he asked Cardinal Nina for “explanations ” of what
had been already explained ad abundantiam. In a despatch
dated May 3, the cardinal-secretary again insisted that the
Belgian prelates had acted properly and necessarily, when
they condemned a law which violated the principles of
Christian morality, and when they interdicted all formal
co-operation in the observance of that law. The Holy See,
again “ explained ” His Eminence, had indeed hoped for a
moment that the Belgian bishops might find it possible to
distinguish between school and school, showing in practice a
kind of indulgence toward such institutions as did not really

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POPE LEO xm. AND EDUCATION IN BELGIUM. 317

inspire distrust in the Catholic mind; but the prelates
replied that such a distinction was impossible. Therefore
“the Holy See, considering the actual condition of the
new schools in general, did not deem it wise to oppose the
judgment of the bishops ; for these prelates were on the
spot, and were fully able to appreciate the circumstances as
well as the needs of the faithful who were committed to
their care.” Nevertheless, again remarks the papal secre-
tary, His Holiness did not cease jbo advise great moderation
in the application of spiritual penalties ; but such advice
was by no means an opposition to the general condemna-
tion of the new schools. Frere-Orban still affected to per-
ceive a discord between the minds of the Belgian bishops
and the mind of the Pontiff. On May 18, he repeated this
often reiterated assertion ; and then, in justification of his
laicizing policy, he pointed to certain other countries, in
which the Catholic clergy had been at least less opposed to
“ neutral ” schools. To this would-be argumentation Car-
dinal Nina replied on June 8, proving that the Holy See
had always condemned those schools, in whatever land they
had been introduced. Before Frere-Orban received this
despatch, he had ordered Baron d’Anethan to withdraw his
legation from the Vatican. In the name of His Holiness,
the cardinal-secretary protested against this outrage on
June 13; and in another despatch, dated June 29, His
Eminence said : “ Europe will render justice to the great

condescension of the Holy See, and to the striking proofs of
his conciliatory spirit which Leo XIII. has given in the course
of this affair. It was the duty of His Holiness, and history
will honor him for it, not to debase his divine mission by
compromises which would have involved the faith of the
rising generation in Belgium, and perhaps the faith of the
entire Belgian people.” In the consistory held on Aug. 20>
our Pontiff delivered a solemn Allocution, in which he con-
demned the Belgian educational law of 1879, and protested
against the recall of the Belgian Minister to the Vatican, as
well as against the dismissal of his nuncio at Brussels. He
protested especially against the latter act, since it was a
violation of the Apostolic dignity, and of the inalienable

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right of the Roman Pontiff to send his envoys to any coun-
try on earth. He praised the zeal of the Belgian prelates,
and the magnificent generosity of the Belgian laity, “ who so
fully recognized the danger that threatened religion when
that law was voted, and who resolved to defend the faith of
their ancestors at every cost” Then he referred to the
grand eulogy of Pope Gregory XVI. on the Belgians, which
that Pope pronounced when he was about to send the future
Leo XIIL as nuncio to Brussels. “ When Gregory XVL
deigned to name us for the pontifical legation in that
country, he spoke to us in most flattering terms concerning
the Belgian nation, styling it a strong race, whose loving
fidelity toward the Apostolic See and its own sovereigns had
been long maintained, despite many vicissitudes. And
we ourselves were able, during our nunciature, to bear wit-
ness to those Belgic virtues which the monuments of long-
vanished day 8 have recorded. We have cherished a special
affection for that people, because of the sweet recollections
of persons and events which we still preserve, as we think of
our residence in that land. We are certain that the Belgians
will never abandon the love and the service of the Church •

that on the contrary, remaining constant in the Catholic
faith, and continuing in their solicitude for the Christian
education of their children, they will always be worthy of
their ancestors.”

On Aug. 3, 1881, Leo XIIL addressed a Brief to Cardinal
Dechamps, urging the necessity of concord among the Bel-
gian Catholics, both clerical and lay; begging them to
abstain from all irritating discussions, and giving them some
rules for their guidance when talking or writing on politico-
religious matters. Some of these remarks will interest the
reader. “ Pilled with anxiety for the maintenance of con-
cord among you, we notice that certain controversies on
public law, which are agitated among you with great fervor,
are not very favorable to peace. The theme of these con-
troversies is the propriety of reconciling the principles of
the new jurisprudence with those inculcated by Catholic
doctrine. No one can desire more ardently than we desire,
the organization of human society on a Christian basis, all

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319

the institutions of the State being penetrated and impregnated
by the Christian virtues. But if Catholics wish to strive
for the common weal, it is necessary that they keep before
their eyes, and follow faithfully, the prudent methods
adopted by the Church in regard to these matters. Although
the Church defends with indomitable firmness the integrity
of revealed truth and of the principles of justice, and although
she endeavors to secure the triumph of these principles in
public and private life ; nevertheless, she ever considers the
circumstances of time, persons, and places, and frequently
she resigns herself to a toleration of certain evils which can-
not be overcome without opening a door to greater ones.
In all discussions, you should beware of passing the bounds
of equity and charity ; you should never accuse rashly, or
even suspect men who are docile to the teachings of the
Church, especially when they are constituted in places of
ecclesiastical dignity.” On June 5, 1883, the Pontiff was
able to congratulate the Belgians on their attention to his
warning voice, in a letter addressed to the members of the
federation of the Catholic societies of the kingdom, then
assembled in convention at Audenarde. And the result of
the prudent zeal of the Belgian laity was soon declared. In
the general elections of June 10, 1884, the Masonic yoke
was cast aside, and an enormous majority of Catholic
deputies were chosen as representatives of a Catholic people.
Under the successive Ministries of Malou and Bernaert, the
work of Frere-Orban and his brethren was undone. On
July 19, the legation to the Vatican was re-established ; and
on Sept. 20, the Chambers voted a new School Law which
restored their legitimate rights to the Catholics, while it
also respected freedom of conscience in their adversaries.

CHAPTER XV.

POPE LEO xm. AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMER-
ICA. THE CONDEMNATION OF SO-CALLED “ AMERICANISM.”

In November, 1889, one hundred years after the institu-
tion of a regular hierarchy in these United States by Pope

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Pius VL, there was opened in Washington, in the presence
of a papal ablegate, Mgr. Satolli, Archbishop of Lepanto,
and of Mr. Harrison, then President of the Republic, a
theological school which was intended to be the beginning
of an American Catholic University. There was much reason
for the complacency manifested by the American Catholic
community on this occasion of an anticipated completion of
its Catholic educational system ; but the satisfaction would
have been more thorough and more justifiable, had there
been perceived no necessity for remembering that at that
very moment many hundreds of parishes in the Republic
were destitute of Catholic elementary schools. This lament-
able fact must have appeared incomprehensible to such of
the participants in this festivity as did not willingly ignore
the convictions of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore,
held in 1884 — sentiments which were accentuated by a decree
that parochial schools should be established in all parishes
in which they did not already exist, unless such foundations
proved impossible of actuation ; that the new schools should
be opeued ivitkin two years ; that deprivation of his parish
would be merited by any pastor who would be derelict in this
matter ; and that all Catholic parents should send their
children to the parochial schools, unless the bishops should
•decide that in particular bases the contrary course might be
pursued. Certainly poverty could scarcely have been ac-
cepted as a palliation of the fault by any friend of Catholic
education who was familiar with the financial prospects of the
heartily welcomed University ; and such an observer might
have trusted that the manifested zeal for the higher education
of Catholic laymen indicated a perception, on the part of the
wealthier American faithful, that necessary and proper men-
tal food is to be given to the children who are mentally
starving or poisoned — that the vital needs of the educational
life of the majority of American Catholics are of paramount
importance. Then it might have been deemed not foolish
to believe that the endowers of the University would finally
equip and endow a Catholic elementary school in every
poor parish in the Republic. Such fancies, however, would
have been dissipated when, in little more than a year after

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the celebration in Washington, dearth of pecuniary resources
was alleged by one of the foremost promoters of the Univer-
sity in defence of a transaction which appeared to menace
the most important of the causes ever championed by the
American hierarchy. The archbishop of St Paul had
entered into an arrangement with the civil authorities of
Faribault and Stillwater, whereby the Catholic schools of
those towns were to pass under the direction of the Public
School Boards for the space of one year, the agreement to
be renewed according to the good pleasure of each party.
It was understood that the Sisters who had hitherto taught
in the Catholic schools were to retain their positions, but
were to use the text-books prescribed by the Board, and were
to give no religious instruction during the school-hours.
The “ Faribault Plan,” as it came to be styled, was certainly
a pecuniary relief to the Catholics who had hitherto sup-
ported the parochial schools affected by it ; but it was regard-
ed by nearly all the bishops and clergy of the Republic as
an entering- wedge which, if tolerated, would ultimately
entail the ruin of the edifice of Catholic elementary education.
The discussions which ensued eventuated in a submission
of the question to the judgment of the Holy See ; and on
April 21, 1892, the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda
decided that “ while the decrees of the Councils of Baltimore
still preserve all their force, nevertheless, all the circum-
stances of the case having been considered, the agreement
concluded by Archbishop Ireland may be tolerated .” In his
explanation of this decision, Cardinal Ledochowski, Prefect
of the Propaganda, recalls the decrees of his Congregation
and of the Third Council of Baltimore concerning the paro-
chial schools, and especially the Canon by which the Balti-
morean synodals “decided very wisely that every church
in every diocese should have a school for the education of
Catholic children in religion, morality, and letters, said
school to be under the authority and direction of the pastor.”
The cardinal-prefect recognizes that very many American
ecclesiastics blame the course pursued by the archbishop of
St. Paul as derogatory to the decrees of the Propaganda
-and of the Council of Baltimore ; but His Eminence adjures

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the clergy to heed the decision of the Sacred Congregation.
The letter of the cardinal-prefect did not terminate the dis-
cussion ; it was asserted by many, notably by the editors of
the Civilta Cattolica, that 'the phrase “may be tolerated”
implied a disapprobation of the “ Faribault Plan.” In these
circumstauces Pope Leo XIII. deemed it prudent to address,
on May 24, 1892, a letter to the bishops of the Ecclesiastical
Province of New York, in which he declared that while it
was His Pontifical will that the decrees of Baltimore should
be religiously observed, “ nevertheless, in the case of all
general laws whenever anything special and unexpected
occurs, equity may lead the lawgiver to tolerate something
which deviates a little from the letter of the law.” And
the Pontiff adds : “ We have perceived that the present
is such a case ; and we have thought it wise to follow the
counsels of moderation and of prudence, rather than to judge
according to the rigor of the law.” Then the Pontiff draws
attention to the fact that in the United States there is not
one bishop who does not condemn the schools of the State,
as they are now constituted. He urges the prelates to con-
tinue their efforts to prevent the little ones of their flocks
from attending schools in which religious instruction is not
given, and in which their morality will be endangered. He
expresses the hope that some day the fairness of the non-
Catliolics among the Americans will cause them to perceive
the propriety of doing justice to their Catholic fellow-citizens
in this matter. On Nov. 16, the question of the schools was
considered by the archbishops of the United States in an
apposite meeting held in New York. The archbishop of
Lepanto, Mgr. Satolli, who had recently returned to the
Republic as special delegate of His Holiness to its prelates,
was present ; and as he laid before the bishops fourteen
propositions designed to regulate the matter of the schools,
he declared that his act was performed “ in the mime of the
Holy Father” (1). We give the salient features of these
propositions : II. Wherever there is no Catholic school, or
when the existing school does not furnish a fitting education
to the pupils, according to their condition of life, then those

(1) Thus In the Official Report of the meeting, signed by the secretary, Mgr. Chapeile.

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children may attend the State institutions with a safe con-
science, if the judgment and conscience of the ordinaries
perceive no danger of perversion in that attendance. Y. The
bishops strictly enjoin, in accordance with the formal pro-
hibition emitted by the Sovereign Pontiff by the mouth of
the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda, that no bishop
or priest dare to refuse the Sacraments, or to threaten such
refusal, to parents who send their children to the public
schools ; and with much greater reason this provision is 'to
be applied to the children themselves. VI. Absolutely and
generally speaking , it is not repugnant that a Catholic child
should receive rudimentary and superior instruction in the
schools of the State. VII. But the Church entertains a horror
for those public schools which oppose Christian truth and true
morality : and once that it appears to be possible to procure the
abolition of such institutions , it is the duty of both clergy and
laity to aid in that abolition . The Church, be it understood,
does not reprobate secular pedagogy as such ; she would
rather encourage a united action of the spiritual and tem-
poral powers, whereby there would be established every-
where public schools which would satisfy the legitimate*
needs of all the citizens in the matter of instruction in the
arts and sciences. VIII. The Church finds that , as a rule r
the public schools in the United States are “ dangerous to faith
and morals ,” because they furnish a merely secular educa-
tion, excluding all religious instruction ; because the teachers
are indiscriminately selected from among all the sects with
which the Republic abounds, and because therefore every
kind of error is liable to be inculcated in the susceptible
minds of the pupils. However, this article grants that when-
ever there is found a public school which, thanks to the-
care of the school commissioners and of the parents in the
community, offers no danger to the faith or morals of the
children, then the parents may avail themselves of that
school, on condition that their offspring are elsewhere taught
carefully all the truths and duties of the Catholic Religion „
IX. Each ordinary is to judge whether, in such and such
a parish of his diocese, a good Catholic school can be main-
tained. XIII. The Catholic schools should be in every

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respect model institutions ; and the teachers should try to
obtain certificates of their capability from the civil educa-
tional authorities, both because such action will show that
they do not despise the prescriptions of the State, and be-
cause they will thus augment the respect of the heterodox
for our schools. Having carefully considered these arti-
cles, the American archbishops accepted them all with
some unimportant modifications (1). In a letter which
Leo XIII. addressed to Cardinal Gibbons on May 31, 1893,
His Holiness alludes to his intention of establishing a
permanent Apostolic Delegation in the United States,
and then having remarked that one of his objects in
sending Mgr. Satolli to the Eepublic - was a settlement
of the school question which had caused much perturbation
in well-meaning minds, he says : “ This venerable brother
obeyed our orders exactly. . . . The wise decisions of the
assembly (of the archbishops in New York) appeared to the
archbishop of Lepanto to be worthy of all praise ; and we
ourselves confirm that judgment.” Then the Pontiff alludes
to the propositions submitted by Mgr. Satolli to the arch-
bishops, the inopportune publication of which by some
indiscreet person had caused much agitation among the
journalistic wiseacres of the Eepublic ; “ Our delegate laid
before the assembly certain propositions which he had drawn
up, and which referred to that double order which embraces

the science of truth and the guidance of life (2) These

propositions of our dele gate having been inopportunely
published, new and more vivid discussions were excited,
.and because of inexact interpretations or of malign insinua-
tions by certain journals, these discussions became more
general and more acrid. Because of this fact, several of the
American bishops, either disliking the interpretations which
had been given to certain of those propositions, or fearing
that said interpretations might result in injury to souls,
confidently laid the matter before us. Therefore, remember-

(1) The Report says : “ Qucc omnia Iccia el perpenm fuerunt in archiepUeoporum
conventu, resnlutis diffleultatibuB efc actid emendationibud requisite die 17 Novem-
brtfi, 1892.”

(2) ” Proportioned quaedam vo bid exhihuit ah de eoncinnatm , dvplicem attingenies
ordinem quo scicntia vcritatis ct actit> vitcv continctuv

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POPE LEO XHL AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 325

ing that the salvation of men most ever be our supreme law,
and wishing also to give you another proof of our goodwill,
we asked each one of you to express his mind separately to
us on this subject. All of you hastened to comply with our
wish. These replies have shown that while some of you
found no cause for fear in the propositions, others thought
that they appeared to abrogate in some measure the decrees
of the Councils of Baltimore on the schools ; and these latter
bishops feared that a consequent diversity of interpretation
of the decrees of Baltimore would engender grave dissensions.
We have examined this question seriously ; and we have
found that the above-mentioned misinterpretations (of the
propositions) accord neither with the intentions of our
delegate, nor with the mind of the Apostolic See. The
principal propositions presented by the archbishop of Lepanto
were drawn from the decrees of the Third Council of Baltimore ;
they especially announce the necessity of using the greatest zeal
in the foundation of Catholic schools, although they leave to
the discretion and conscience of each ordinary the duty of
determining the cases when a child may or may not attend
a public school. If in every document the words at its end
ought to be understood in the sense of those which precede
them, is it not dishonest to give to the second part of a
discourse an interpretation which contradicts the first part?
When our delegate presented these propositions to the
episcopal assembly in New York, he proclaimed his admira-
tion for the pastoral zeal shown by the American bishops in
their promulgation of the wise decrees of the Third Council
of Baltimore concerning the education of Catholic youth.
And he added that so far as those decrees prescribed a
general rule of conduct, they were to be faithfully obeyed ;
and that without any absolute condemnation of all the public
schools, energetic efforts zoere to be put forth for the numerical
increase and perfect organization of Catholic schools It is
evident from this letter of Leo Xm, if indeed it had not
been evident before the letter was received in America, that
firstly, parochial schools must be maintained and extended
throughout the Republic ; secondly, that it is the province
of each bishop to judge, in the case of each parish in his

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diocese, whether parents are to be free to send their children
to a public school ; and thirdly, that a general permission
for a use of the public schools cannot be accorded , since only
certain cases are affected by the toleration of what is in last
analysis an abuse — “ possunt tnim casus incidere” (1).

During the years 1891 and 1892 the minds of the Catholics
in the United States were profoundly agitated by a question
which was intimately connected with that of the “ Faribault
Plan,” and the consequences of which promised, at one
time, to be as baneful as those which would have been en-
tailed by a general adoption of that plan. We allude to
those claims which, considered collectively, a certain element
in the Republic has been pleased to designate as “ Cahen-
slyism.” In several of the countries which furnish a large
number of immigrants to the United States of America, there
had been organized branches of that zealous Society of St.
Raphael which occupies itself with both the religious and
material interests of those immigrants during the first few'
years of their residence in the New World. In April, 1891,
the guiding spirits of this noble organization, among whom
were such representatives of the most worthy among the
European aristocracies as the Marquis Volpe-Landi, the
‘Count de Merode, Prince Isenburg-Bierstein, and the Prince
Schwartzenberg, met in Congress at Lucerne. The result
of their deliberations was a report addressed to Cardinal
Rampolla del Tindaro, the Papal Secretary of State, in
which it was declared that an active intervention of the

(1) While the controversy concerning the “ Faribault Plan ” was being waged, another,
and one which was closely connected with that plan, attracted much attention. This
dispute, having for its object a determination of the extent of the rights of the State in the
matter of popular instruction, was held by Dr. Bouquillon, a professor in the Catholic
University in Washington, and the Civiltd Cattolicn. According to Bouquillon, the
State possesses, independently of all religious principles, the right to rutse the children of
its citizens ; it can and should regulate every matter connected with schools, fixing the
minimum of obligatory instruction, imposing what it will in the way of subject-matter
for acquisition, punishing parents who fail to obey its prescriptions, and exercising full
jurisdiction over every private educational establishment. Of course the partisans of the
“ Faribault Plan,” as well as all the lovers of Statolatry. whose number is continually
lucreasing in our Republic, acclaimed the theory of the Universitarian. The Civiltd
Cattolica strenuously controverted the Spartan-like assumption, defending in its turn the
thesis proposed by ScbifBni ( Moral Philomphu, Vol. li., § 517) In these terms : ” Excepting
only that moral and religious education wThich ought to be given by the parental care under
the direction of the ecclesiastical and not the civil authority. Instruction such as is given
generally in the schools cannot be enjoined as a thing necessarily to be accepted by every
citizen.”

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POPE LEO xni. AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 327

Holy See could alone prevent an annihilation of the spirit-
ual interests of a large number of the Germans, Italians, and
Austro-Hungarians who had arrived in the United States
during the previous few years. This report was signed by
Cahensly, the secretary of the German branch of the Society
of St. Raphael, and by the Marquis Volpe-Landi, the presi-
dent of the Italian branch. According to these gentlemen :
“ The most authoritative statistics show that the Catholic
immigrants into the United States, together with their
children, sh6uld have given to the Republic, by this time, a
Catholic population of twenty-six millions ; whereas we
know that there are not more than ten millions of Catholics
in the country, showing that there has been a loss of six-
teen millions.” Undoubtedly there has been a very exten-
sive “ leakage ” in the Catholic population of the United
States ; but in the collective letter which the American arch-
bishops sent to His Holiness during their conference of
Nov., 1892, the prelates protested that the Raphaelite calcula-
tions were a gross exaggeration. Cahensly and Volpe-Landi
alleged six causes of the lamented defection : I. The

absence of adequate protection for the immigrants, during
their voyage, and on their arrival in America. IL An in-
sufficiency of priests and of parishes for each nationality
among the immigrants. III. Exorbitant pecuniary sacrificed
frequently demanded from the faithful. IV. The public
schools . V. The need of benevolent and national Catholic
societies. VI. The absence of representatives of each
foreign nationality in the American episcopate. In their
illustration of the first of these causes of defection, the
Raphaelites insisted on the necessity of a preservation of
their mother-tongue on the part of the immigrants as well
as on an actuation of the idea of national parishes (1). 4< Of

course,” said the report, “ in time the immigrants will speak
the English language ; but if they do not practice their re-
ligion until that time arrives, there will be a probability of
their not practicing it at all. Sad experience has taught us

Cl) Id 1886 tbe German Catholics had even asked the Propaganda to order that no Ger-
man, or child of a German, should be allowed to frequent any other than a German
■church, without an exeat from his bishop. It goes without saying that the request was
refused.

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that such is nearly always the case. And since each people
has its own characteristics, it is necessary that its priests
should not only speak its language, but should also be of
the same nationality. Therefore it is desirable that each
national group of immigrants be organized in a distinct
parish, under a pastor of its own nationality.” It would be
absurd to deny that justice and Christian prudence formed,
in the main, the animating spirit of these views ; but the
English-speaking Catholics of the Republic, who formed
the immense majority of the faithful, discerned in their
actuation a danger to the American national unity. In his
admirable work on the Pontificate of Leo XIII., Mgr.
T’Serclaes says : “ Unfortunately, the report insisted, in a

rather unhappy fashion, on the possibility of an American-
ization without a final abandonment of one’s original
national predilections. This idea was frequently enunciated,
notably in the insistence on the establishment of national
Catholic societies for the workingmen, and in the Sixth
Article which demanded representatives of each nationality
in the American episcopate. This last point excited a ver-
itable storm in the United States. The dominating thought
in the report of Lucerne was acceptable in a certain sense.
Certainly an abandonment of the immigrants, without aid
among the olden inhabitants, was an exposure of them to the
danger of a loss of faith and of morality. Therefore nothing
could be more useful than the establishment of national socie-
ties, which would remind the newly-arrived of their mother-
country ; nothing could be more just than to supply their
religious wants by means of priests speaking their mother-
tongue who were of their own nationality. But it was
undoubtedly imprudent to desire a maintenance of the
separate nationalities through a long series of generations,
in the very bosom of that American people which is mainly
composed of persons who are ‘ Anglo-Saxon ’ or Irish by
race. The experience of other countries proves that the as-
similation of immigrants with the nationals is soon effected,
and often in the second generation ; therefore it would seem
that protective societies ought to restrict themselves to
a preservation of the religious interests of the immigrants

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POPE LEO XHL AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 329*

during the period of transition, thereby facilitating the fusion
of the foreigners with the natives. But the report of
Cahensly and Volpe-Landi regarded the question from the
contrary point of view, and seemed to look to a division of the
races, and not to their harmonious commingling.” It was
quite natural that the English-speaking Catholics of the
United States should have protested against the pretensions
of the Society of St. Raphael ; but an immediate affectation
of violated American patriotism attained the height of ab-
surdity when Catholic pens began to write about “ the com
spiracy of Lucerne,” and to designate as a “ siege of Rome ”
the report which Cahensly and Volpe-Landi had presented
to the Father of the Faithful. The unfortunate secretary
was accused of the blackest designs ; his language was
travestied, and he was represented as talking in a fashion
that would have frightened him ; it was declared that not
only all the members of the noble society, but also all the
German bishops aud Windthorst himself, were but tools of
an insidious Austro-German policy. Several of the weak-
lings so common in American Catholic journalism told their
readers that Cahensly insisted on the establishment of two
bishops, one American, and the other German, in each
diocese of the Republic ; whereas the report had plainly
said : “ Since the dioceses contain faithful of different nation-
alities, it is evident that we do not desire any division of
these dioceses by nationalities. What we do request from
the wisdom and justice of the Holy See is that the episcopal
body be made to include prelates of the various nationalities,,
so that the different peoples may be represented by some of
their own in the episcopate, in the ecclesiastical provinces,
and in the Councils.” In vain Cahensly declared that he
adopted as his own the saying of a journal of Cincinnati :
“ That immigrant is a traitor, and cannot be tolerated here,
who proposes in this country to favor the interests of his
native land.” The irritation continued ; and finally the Holy
See interfered. On June 28, 1892, Cardinal Rampolla wrote
to Cardinal Gibbons : “ The Holy Father cannot but rejoice

because of the establishment of associations among you des-
tined to give material and especially spiritual aid to the

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Catholics who now migrate to America. But we have heard
that some of these associations — for instance, the German
Society of St. Raphael — are endeavoring, in their zeal to
attain their object, to procure the elevation of a represen-
tative of each nationality among the immigrants to the Amer-
ican episcopate.” His Eminence alludes to the displeasure
excited even among the American bishops by this project ;
and he declares that the Holy See finds that the idea “ is
neither necessary nor opportune,” and that there is no inten-
tion, on the part of the Pontiff, of making any change in the
method of episcopal nominations which has hitherto obtained
in the United States. The American prelates are asked not
to foster “ a movement which has been occasioned by a fear
which had no foundation,” but rather to promote harmony,
resting assured that the Holy See will never entertain any
proposition which could disturb them. And the cardinal-
secretary is careful to add that His Holiness considers that
the spiritual interests of the European immigrants are suffi-
ciently protected by the appointment of pastors who are their
fellow-countrymen. Certainly this letter ought to have
terminated the trouble. But the German branch of the
Society of St. Raphael was nettled ; and it complained to
Cardinal Rampolla, because he had singled it out for im-
plicit reproof, while all the other branches of the society
had cherished the same reprobated ideas. And the Germans
took advantage of the opportunity, in a memorial ad hoc , to
reiterate their desire that every lawful means should be
adopted to secure the preservation of its language to each
nationality in the Republic. This memorial was referred to
Cardinal Ledochowski, who had recently been made prefect
of the Propaganda ; and on May 15, 1892, there was sent to
each bishop in the United States a circular which put an end to
the agitation. After a meed of praise to the zeal of the Ameri-
can prelates, His Eminence thus speaks of the nomination
of bishops : “ The discipline now in. force must be preserved

entire and inviolable. . . .Your Grandeur knows that in your
country when there occurs an episcopal vacancy, there begin
-certain movements among both clergy and people, and
experience teaches that these movements are becoming

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 331

insensibly more grievous and more frequent . . .We see the
people and the clergy agitating, without regard to legitimate
right, in favor of certain candidates for the episcopal throne ;
discussions concerning them are held in the newspapers ;
public and private meetings are convened, and each party
lauds its own preference, while it disparages all others.”
Such agitations, says the cardinal, are principally caused by
the intense desire of each faction to have a bishop who be-
longs to its nationality, as though the choice of a worthy
pastor were a matter of private interest, and not of the
general good of the Church. The Holy See regards the wel-
fare of the whole Church whenever it appoints a bishop in
any country ; and it must have that welfare before its eyes
most especially when there is a question of the United
States of America, a land in which men of various European
nations, seeking a new country, are forming one people and
consequently one nation. The cardinal says that the
bishops “ must crush all attempts ” to undermine the author-
ity of the American Plenary Councils, especially that of the
Third Council of Baltimore, whose decrees, 4< most conform-
able to the necessities of the time and the place,” have been
approved by the Holy See. It will be futile, concludes His
Eminence, for any persons to devise or to entertain projects
which in any way contradict the prescriptions of the Coun-
cil of Baltimore, “ since the Apostolic See has nothing more
at heart than the integrity of Ecclesiastical Law, the guard-
ian of order and the upholder of peace.”

When it was announced that the government and people
of the United States intended to celebrate, in a becoming
manner, the fourth centennial anniversary of the discovery
of America, Pope Leo XIH. \vrote to the Committee of
Arrangements, declaring his wish to be associated with so
laudable a manifestation of legitimate national pride, and of
gratitude to the Giver of all good thipgs. Having praised
“ the vigor of the American people which enables them to
effect the most difficult tasks with such audacity and suc-
cess,” His Holiness expressed the hope “ that their noble
enterprise (the World’s Fair), to the success of which other
nations would contribute, would have the happy result of

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(STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

further inciting the genius of man to the efforts for the devel-
opment of the gifts of Nature, and for the encouragement of
the Fine Arts.” Among the objects which the Pontiff loaned
to the Centennial Exposition was the celebrated map on
which Pope Alexander YL traced what was to be the future
line of demarcation between the Spanish and the Portuguese
possessions in the New World (1). The American secre-
tary of state, in a letter to Cardinal Rampolla, in which he
assured His Eminence that the utmost care would be taken
in order to ensure the restoration of the pontifical exhibits
to their proper domicile, recognized the intimate association
of the Holy See with the enterprise of Columbus ; and in his
turn the cardinal-secretary of state to His Holiness, after
thanking the American government for its courtesy, an-
nounced that the Pontiff would be represented by a special del-
egate at the Columbian ceremonies ; “ His Holiness, who has
so much reason for manifesting special regard for the govern-
ment of the United States, because of the freedom enjoyed
by the Catholic Church in that country, has determined to
be represented at the festivities in honor of the great Gen-
oese, and by a personage who is distinguished no less by his
own merits than by his exalted position in the ecclesiastical
hierarchy. This person is Mgr. Satolli, Archbishop of Le-
panto, a prelate greatly esteemed for his virtue, as well* as
for the profound erudition which he has exhibited in so
many wri tings.” On July 16, 1892, Leo XIII. addressed
to the bishops of Italy, Spain* and North and South
America the Encyclical concerning the imminent Columbian
festivities to which we have already alluded (p. 190).

In the beginning of 1893 Pope Leo XIII. actuated his
long-entertained design of establishing a permanent Apostolic
Delegation in the United States, appointing Mgr. Satolli,
whom we have already seen fulfilling a temporary mission
to the American bishops, as the first incumbent of the
important position. In the letter by which he anounnced
the new departure to the cardinal-archbishop of Baltimore,
the Pontiff said that the mission of Mgr. Satolli during the
Columbian festivities had been intended as a testimony of

(1) See our Vol. lii.„ p. 221.

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 333

“ the pontifical regard for those who are at the head of the
American Republic ” ; and then he continued : “ We have
•openly declared, not only that your nation is as dear to us
as are those flourishing nations to whom we are accustomed
to accredit representatives of our authority, but that we
earnestly desire a firmer consolidation of the ties which bind
you,and your flocks to our person.” Shortly after the pro-
mulgation of this Apostolic Letter, His Holiness felt himself
justified in writing again to Cardinal Gibbons : “ We were
greatly gratified when we learned that the additional mark
of our regard for your nation had been followed by demon-,
etrations of a general gratitude and respect for ourself.”
Noteworthy indeed was the reception accorded to the Papal
representative in each one of the great cities of the Republic
which he visited officially during the first few months of his
delegation ; but special interest was attached to his magnif-
icent reception in New York, since it afforded to Arch-
bishop Corrigan an opportunity to break a noble silence, and
to finally vindicate himself, without any debasement of his
personal or official dignity, from the aspersions which many
of the secular and even some Catholic journals had cast upon
His Grace as they deliberately falsified his position on the
School Question, and as they travestied his sentiments in
regard to the delegate-apostolic. On Aug. 15, 1893, Mgr.
Satolli pontificated in the cathedral of the metropolis, before
a congregation of more than 10,000 persons. After the
Gospel, His Grace of New York mounted the pulpit, and
began a discourse on the duties of bishops and their flocks
to the Sovereign Pontiff and to his delegates. Finally, the
archbishop approached the subject which most of his audi-
tors, who had borne with impatience his long silence in face
of his detractors, were anxiously awaiting. He entered on
the matter by an allusion to the happiness and advantages
experienced by those who, like himself, had received their
ecclesiastical education in the Eternal City. Then he de-
clared that he who had enjoyed those privileges would feei
himself humiliated if he found that he was expected to pro-
test that never, even for an instant, had he entertained the
idea of disobeying the explicit commands, or of even disre-

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garding the wishes of the Holy Father. For it is certain,
insisted the prelate, that excepting that sorrow which is en-
tailed by an offence against God, no more poignant grief
can afflict the heart of a conscientious bishop, than that which
he feels when his faith is attacked, or wheh doubt is ex-
pressed concerning his fidelity to his oaths of consecration.
Of course, the archbishop reflected that such a cross might
be productive of great merit ; and he knew that a bishop so
afflicted was in duty bound to imitate his Master, and to
forgive his calumniators. In conclusion, His Grace protest-
ed that he rejoiced with his brethren of the clergy, because
of the honor accruing to their diocese from the presence of
the representative of the Vicar of Jesus Christ ; and in the
name of his priests, as well as in his own, he welcomed the
delegate-apostolic most cordially. Then the archbishop de-
clared that he repudiated whatever had been said in public
or in private, against the undeniable rights or against the
sacred character of his venerable guest ; but he cheerfully
endorsed everything that had been said in exaltation of the
delegate’s office and prerogatives (1).

During several years previous to the period which now en-
gages our attention, certain imaginative American clerics had
devoted much of their time to a fanciedly imperative task
of indoctrinating the Catholics of the Republic with lessons
in patriotism, although outside their diminutive circle no
one had dreamed that the American Catholics needed this

(1) Mgr. Satolli was destined to look askance at those who had asked him to distrust the
Archbishop of New York. We cull the following remarks from the Church Progress* of
St. Louis (Aug. 12, 1899) : “ It is well to look back at times. Past history often casts a
light on present events. I remember when Cardinal Satolli first came to this country as
Papal Ablegate. He was acclaimed with a flourish of trumpets and with huzzahs by the
Faribaulters. They had prepared Mgr. Satolli in Rome ; his right ear was filled with their
dust. When he arrived, they hedged him round, Jealously guarding him from everybody
save their own clique. The Papal Ablegate could not then speak English. He had been led
to believe that the people of the United States were eager to embrace Catholicity, if only
some slight concessions were made in matters of discipline. After a time Mgr. Satolli, who
has eyes and ears of his own, and had learned to read and speak English, learned that
things were not in this country as he had been led to suppose. From that time Faribault-
ism ceased to flourish in Rome. Its weediness became apparent. Cardinal Satolli had
studied the situation and understood what it meant. Since then His Eminence at Rome

has been guarding the integrity of the Church in this country As long as Mgr. Satolli

was in their hands (the hands of the “ Americanists”), and was ignorant of the real con-
ditions in this country, they could not blow his praises too loud nor too long. And now
that he has seen through their complot, alas! for human fickleness, His Eminence is con*
signed to the limbo of their wrath.”

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 335

instruction. Platform and even pulpit were made to resound
with declamations which implied that these clergymen alone
were the models of all that was patriotic for the imitation of
their Catholic compatriots ; and as such models they were
persistently indicated by the heterodox press, and by a few
of the weaker sort of Catholic journals and periodicals.
Had the exuberances of these gentlemen been manifested by
nothing more grave than their titillating verbiage ; had they
and their comparatively few acclaimants prudently confined
the resultant theories within the regions of simple academics ;
the American hierarchy, as well as the immense majority of
the Catholic laity, might have continued to smile indulgently,
waiting until the lessons of experience would act with their
wonted vigor. But the region of pure academics was not
sufficiently broad for the new “ Americanists,” as they had
come to be styled. In a sermon devoted to a commentary
on the Apostolic Letter which will soon claim our attention,
Dr. McQuade, the venerable bishop of Rochester, N. Y.,
very aptly described a few of the vagaries of the “ American-
ists,” after their descent from the realms of theory to those
of practice : “ Firstly, you will remember the sorry spectacle
of the Parliament of Religions at the Chicago Fair, when
the Catholic Church was put on a par with every pretense
of religious denomination from Mohammedanism and Bud-
dhism down to the lowest form of Evangelicalism and infi-
delity. It is not at all surprising that our simple Catholics,
who knew their Catechism in its letter and spirit, were
shocked at this degradation of the Religion of Christ. The
Holy Father’s reprobation of such parliaments satisfied the
just sentiments of our Catholic people. Secondly, there was
heard the cry from some quarters that if our Catholic peo-
ple would adopt the State system of public school education
— education without religion or God — the American people
would be disarmed and would embrace us all as brothers.
Many of the lukewarm and the indifferent were led for a time
to think that schools without religion would suffice. The
whole question went before the head of our Church for ad-
judication, and the response gratified the heart of every loyal
child of the Church. It left no room for doubt or cavil..

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Thus ended the second cropping out of false Americanism.
'Thirdly, an assault was directed against the ban placed on
secret societies. Just when the evil consequences of secret
organizations are making themselves felt everywhere, and
non-Catholic religious denominations find their churches
depleted because the Lodge has become a substitute for the
Church, and a few natural virtues replace the supernatural
teachings and counsels of Christ, our liberal-minded Catholics
would open the doors of the Lodges to our Catholics. They
were not satisfied with permitting Catholics to enter the ‘ Odd
Fellows ’ and ‘ Knights of Pythias * Lodges, but held out
the hope that soon the ban would be raised from Freema-
sonry. The Pope’s letter condemning the ‘ Odd Fellows,’
the 1 Knights of Pythias,’ and the ‘Sons of Temperance,’ ex-
tinguished all hope of raising the ban against Freemasonry.
Thus the third form of false Americanism among Catholics
was shattered. The fourth exhibition came before the pub-
lic when a Catholic ecclesiastic took his stand before a non-
Catholic University in his clerical robes to advertise to the
community the new-born Liberalism of the Catholic Church.
It was an advertisement well worth paying for, as it was an
encouragement to Catholic parents to send their sons to Uni-
versities of such liberal tendencies that they were glad to rank
among the alumni the veriest atheists in the land. It was
an innovation that affected the whole ecclesiastical body ; yet
the leaders in these proceedings never condescended to take
counsel except from their superior wisdom.” The bishop of
Rochester might have adduced many other illustrations of
the necessary consequences of the new theories ; but these
will suffice to indicate the dangers which were threatening
ihe Church in the United States when Pope Leo XIII. sent to
Cardinal Gibbons, under date of Jan. 22, 1899, an Apostolic
Letter which showed those dangers in their native hideous-
ness to the American Catholics. The reader will remember
that in 1891 there appeared in the United States a biogra-
phy of one of the founders of the community of secular
priests known as the Congregation of St Paul the Apos-
tle (1). The author of this biography must have been sur-

(1) The Life of father Keeker, by the Rev. Walter EUiott.

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prised when he heard the “ Americanists ” lauding his hero
as “the Paul of the nineteenth century,” and it is improb-
able that he believed with the innovators that Hecker was
“ the apostle of the reconciliation of the Church with the
age.” Certain peculiar views of the famous Paulist attracted
the attention of the European theologians, when his biogra-
phy was translated into French by the Abbe Klein ; then
Magnien asked : Was Father Hecker a saint ? and Delattre
examined the nature of An American Catholicism . Finally,

on Jan. 22, 1899, in order to terminate the controversies
which had been excited by “ Heckerism,” as the new opinions
had come to be designated, His Holiness issued the letter,
Testem benevolentice nostrce , from which we shall quote the
more salient passages : “ You are well aware, Beloved Son,

that the Life of Isaac Thomas Hecker , especially through the
agency of those who undertook to publish it in a foreign
language or to interpret it, has excited no little controversy
by reason of certain opinions that have been introduced
concerning the Christian manner of living (t). . . .The prin-
ciples on which the new opinions we have mentioned are
based may be reduced to this, that in order the more easily

(1) There were some acrimonious debates between the “Americanists” and their
opponents, concerning the proper translation of this passage. The Roman correspondent
of the Freeman's Jtmmal of New York (St. Killan More), thus commented on the matter:
“The translation (made in the office of the Baltimore Sun , and then copied by the other
American papers), is in the main a very satisfactory one ; but It fails altogether to give
the true sense of the Pontiffs thought in a part of one important paragraph : In the
Latin this runs : ‘ Cnmpertum tibi est , dilecte Mi noster. Ubrum de vita Isaaci Thomas
Hecker , corum pra’sertim opera , qui aliena lingua edendum vel interpretandum sus-
ceperunt, controversial excitasse non modicas ob invectas quasdam de rations Chris-
tians vivendi opinions*.' In the Italian version (which, let me point out, is official) the
passage is as follows : ‘ Li e. ben noto, dttetto flglio nostro, che U libro intomo alia vita
di lsacco-Tommcisso Hecker , per opera in ispecialita di colmro che lo tradusscro in
altra lingua o Jo chiosarono , svseito controversie non pochc per talvne opinion
mease fuoriintomo al vivere Cristiano.' And Anally, the English translation puts it
this way : ‘ It is known to you, beloved son, that The Life of Isaac Thomas Hecker
especially as interpreted and translated in a foreign language, has excited not a little con-
troversy, because therein have been voiced certain opinions concerning the way of leading
a Christian life/ Now the real sense of the passage is this : 4 It is well known to you,
beloved son, that the book on The Life of Isaac Thomas Hecker has, especially through
the work of those who have undertaken to publish it iu a foreign tongue or to comment
upon it, excited no little controversy, by reason of certain opinions advanced concerning
the way of leading a Christian life.1 This last version is not elegant (far from it), but in
the light of the Latin and Italian texts, it is accurate, and tbat is the main thing to bo
considered now. The difference between it and the published translation is sufficiently
important in itself, but it becomes more Important still, owing to the coloring it has given
to the entire document. The translation makes His Holiness put all the responsibility of

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STUDIES IN CHUBCH HISTORY.

to bring over to the Catholic doctrine those who dissent from
it, the Church ought to adapt herself somewhat to our
advanced civilization, and relaxing her ancient rigor, show
some indulgence to modern popular theories and methods.
Many think that this is to be understood not only with
regard to the rule of life, but also to the doctrines in which
the deposit of faith is contained On that point the Vati-
can Council says : ‘ The doctrine of faith which God has

revealed is not proposed like a theory of philosophy which
is to be elaborated by the human understanding, but as a
divine deposit delivered to the Spouse of Christ to be faith-
fully guarded and infallibly declared. . . . That sense of the
sacred dogmas is to be faithfully kept which Holy Mother
Church has once declared, and is not to be departed from
under the specious pretext of a more profound understand-
ing.’ .... Nor is the suppression to be considered altogether
free from blame, which designedly omits certain principles
of Catholic doctrine and buries them, as it were, in oblivion.

The saije Vatican Council says : ‘ By the divine

and Catholic faith we must receive all of those things which
are contained in the word of God, either written or handed
down, and are proposed by the Church whether in solemn

the controversy on the French version of The Life of Father Hecker and the views of
the religious life contained in It ; whereus the Holy Father lays the responsibility on all
those who have given countenance and publicity to those views by promoting the publi-
cation of The Life of Father Hcckcr in French and by commenting on it in various
ways. Now leaving this subject of responsibility, it is a very serious mistake to suppose
that only the French Life is referred to in the Papal document I note that an American
clergyman has in a manner excused His Holiness for the condemnation of The Life of
Father Hcckcr on the ground that the Pope, being a very busy man, has not time to
examine the accuracy of a translation, and Just trusts to luck in dashing off a condemna-
tion. This view of the matter is wildly grotesque, besides being grossly disrespectful.
The supreme authority of the Church does not work on these off-hand lines, and in the
present case I am In a position to state that the English as well as the French edition has
been subjected to the most careful examination and (this is the most important point)
been found to be out of harmony with Catholic teachings. Indeed, nobody who reads the
English work and the Papal letter together can fail to see that a number of ivroponitions
singled nut for reproof in the latter are contained explicity in the former , while the
tone of the one is simply in violent contradiction with the tone of the other. Let me ob-
serve here that I am not now discussing what Father Hecker or his followers and admirers
held or hold subjectively. That is another matter, and it is highly satisfactory to see
with what unanimity everybody concerned repudiates and condemns all the propositions
repudiated and condemned by His Holiness. But let us look objective facts squarely in
the face and bow to their Inexorable logic, no matter how much hurt we may be by them.
It is a fact that The Life of Father Hecker in English as well as in French contains
objectively teachings which are not in consonance with the teachings of the Catholic
Church.”

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 339

decision or by the ordinary universal magisterium, to be
believed as having been divinely revealed.’ Far be it then
from anyone to diminish or for any reason whatever to pass
over anything of this divinely delivered doctrine ; whosoever
would do so, would wish to alienate Catholics from the
Church, rather than to bring over to the Church those who
dissent from her. . . . The history of all the past ages is
witness that the Apostolic See, to which not only the office of
teaching, but also the supreme government of the whole
Church was committed, has constantly adhered to the same
doctrine , in the same sense and in the same mind: but it has
always been accustomed to so modify the rule of life, that,
while keeping the divine right inviolate, it has never disre-
garded the maimers and customs of the various nations
which it embraces. If required for the salvation of souls,
who will doubt that it is ready to do so at the present
time ? — But this is not to be determined by the will of pri-
vate individuals who are mostly deceived by the appearance
of right, but ought to be left to the judgment of the Church.
In this all must acquiesce who wish to avoid the censure of
our predecessor Pius VI., who proclaimed the 18th Proposi-
tion of the Synod of Pistoia ‘ to be injurious to the Church
and to the Spirit of God which governs her, inasmuch as it
subjects to scrutiny the discipline established and approved
by the Church, as if the Church could establish a useless
discipline or one which would be too onerous for Christian
liberty to bear’ (1). It is far indeed from our intention to
repudiate all that the genius of the time begets ; nay, what-
ever the search for truth attains, or the effort after good
achieves, will always be welcome to us, for it increases the
patrimony of doctrine and enlarges the limits of public
prosperity. But all this, to possess real utility, should thrive
without setting aside the authority and wisdom of the
Church. ... It is hard to understand how those who are im-
bued with Christian principles can place the natural ahead:
of the supernatural virtues, and attribute to them greater
power and fecundity. Is nature, then, with grace added to
it, weaker than when left to its own strength ? and have

. (1) See our Vol. iv., p. 596.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

the eminently holy men, whom the Church reveres, shown
themselves weak and incompetent in the natural order, be-
cause they have excelled in Christian virtue ? Even if we
admire the sometimes splendid acts of the natural virtues,
how rare is the man who really possesses the habit of these
natural virtues ? .... If we scrutinize more closely these
particular acts, we shall discover that oftentimes they have
more the appearance than the reality of virtue. But let us
grant that they are real. If we do not wish to run in vain ,
if we do not wish to lose sight of the eternal blessedness
to which God in His goodness has destined us, of what use
are the natural virtues unless the gift and strength of divine

grace be added? With this opinion about natural virtue,

another is intimately connected, according to which all
Christian virtues are divided as it were into two classes,
passive , as they say, and active ; and they say that the for-
mer were better suited for the past times, but the latter are
more in keeping with the present. There is not and can

not be a virtue which is really passive From this species

of contempt of the evangelical virtues which are wrongly
called passive it follows that the mind is imbued gradually
with a feeling of disdain for the religious life. »And that
this is common to the advocates of these new opinions, we
gather from some of their utterances concerning the
wows which Religious Orders pronounce. For, say they,
rsuch vows are altogether out of keeping with the spirit
.of our age, inasmuch as they narrow the limits of human
liberty ; they are better adapted to weak minds than to
: strong ones ; they avail little for Christian perfection and
,the good of human society, and rather obstruct and interfere
•with them. That these assumptions are false is evident
from the usage and doctrine of the Church, always accord-
ing the most formal approval to religious life. Nor should
there be any distinction of praise between those who lead
;an active life and those who, attracted by seclusion, give
themselves up to prayer and mortification of the body. How
gloriously they have merited from human society and do
still merit, should be evident to all who do not ignore how
the continual prayer of a just man , especially when joined

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 341

to affliction of the body, avails to propitiate and conciliate

the majesty of God If there are any, therefore, who prefer

to unite together in one society without the obligation of vowsr
let them do as they desire. That is not a new institution
in the Church, nor is it to be disapproved. But let them be-
ware of setting such association above Beligious Orders.
Since mankind is more prone now than heretofore to the en-
joyment of pleasure, much greater esteem is to be accorded to

those who have left all things and have followed Christ

Lastly it is also maintained that the method which Catho-
lics have followed thus far for recalling those who differ
from us is to be abandoned, and another followed. It suffi-
ces to advert that it is not prudent, Beloved Son, to neglect
what antiquity with its long experience, guided as it is by

Apostolic teaching, has stamped with its approval If

among the different methods of preaching the word of God,
one may sometimes prefer that by which those who dissent
from us are addressed, not in the Church but in any private
and proper place, not in disputation but in amicable confer-
ence, such method is not to be reprehended, provided that
those who are devoted to that work by the authority of the
bishop be men who have given proof of science and virtue.
.... Hence from all that we have hitherto said, it is clear,
Beloved Son, that we cannot approve the opinions which
some comprise under the head of Americanism. If by that
name be designated the characteristic qualities which reflect
honor on the people of America, just as other nations have
what is special to them ; or if it implies the condition of
your commonwealths, or the laws and customs which prevail
in them ; there is surely no reason why we should deem that
it ought to be discarded. But if it is to be used not only to
signify, but even to commend the above doctrines, there can
be no doubt but that our Venerable Brethren the Bishops
of America would be the first to repudiate and condemn it, as
being especially unjust to them and to the entire nation as
well. For it raises the suspicion that there are some among
you who imagine and desire a Church in America different
from that ivhich is in the rest of the world. One in the
unity of doctrine as in the unity of government — such is the

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Catholic Church ; and since God has established its centre
and foundation in the Chair of Peter, one which is rightly
called Roman, for where Peter is, there is the Church ” (1).

The reader will have noted that Pope Leo XIII. was
careful to assure us that this condemnation of a false
“ Americanism ” did not involve any reprobation of the
political or patriotic predilections of the American people.
It was to be expected,' therefore, that “ the opinions which
some comprise under the head of ‘ Americanism’ ” would be
repudiated by the entire American Church as soon as the
Roman Pontiff drew attention to the falsity and evil tenden-
cies of those principles ; especially since a further advocacy of
such ideas would confirm “the suspicion that there were
some who imagined and desired a Church in America dif-
ferent from that which is in the rest of the world.” Nor was
this expectation entirely unsatisfied. But a few of the
Americanists,” while professing submission to the Pontifical
decision, insisted, in a quasi-Jansenistic fashion, that none
of the condemned theories had been received, if indeed they
had ever been known, in the American Church ; that His
Holiness had been deceived by certain intriguing spirits
surrounding him, and by the mistakes or perhaps criminal

(1) Commenting on tbla Apostolic Letter in its Issue of March*18, 1899, the Civiltd Cattolica
says : “ It is a historical fact that the word * Americanism ’ was coined neither in France
cor In Germany nor anywhere else in Europe by enemies of the United States. Its origin
was purely American, and there it was employed at first to indicate in general the ‘new
idea1 which was to rejuvenate the Church and, in particular, the ‘ new crusade ’ which
was to be led against the uncompromising position of the Catholics of the old creed. But
one capita], all-important imitation, must be borne in mind. The word ‘ Americanism ’
although it is neither void of sense nor indicative of a phantom, does not mean,
neither is it employed in the apostolic letter to designate, a set of opinions common to all
Americans or even one peculiar to all Catholics in the United States. . . . But if the
* Americanism ’ condemned by Leo XIII. cannot be called American in the sense of its
being common to all Americans, or at least to those who profess the Catholic faith, it must
be called and is American in the sense that America was its birthplace and that there it
found its first advocates and adherents. These in truth were never numerous in the
United States, but being restless and noisy, they always professed to be the only true
Americans and the only genuine representatives of the Church. . . . Whoever knows
anything about the causes defended by them, their speeches that have been printed, the
introductions with which they have prefaced the wrorks of others, the approval which they
have given to certain books, the pamphlets and articles which they have published in
various periodicals, the memoirs scattered right and left ; whoever knows, we say, all this
and other things besides, needs not names or other proofs to be convinced that the
‘ Americanism * that has been reproved by the supreme head of the Church is not ‘an
inflated balloon,’ is not an invention of the enemies of the United 8tates. but a sad reality
which precisely on account of the evils which it had already produced in the United
States and of the greater evils threatened, if it had been allowed to progress and grow

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unfaithfulness of the Frenchmen who had respectively trans-
lated and misinterpreted the Life of Father Becker — in fine,
the more obstinate of the “ Americanists ” asked the Cath-
olic world to believe that His Holiness was simply a theo-
logical and Pontifical Don Quixote. The assertion that the
“ Americanistic ” opinions had been unknown in the Amer-
ican Church before their ostentatious discovery by the
Roman Pontiff, or perhaps by the Abbes Magnien and
Delattre, was daring indeed ; it implied that the memories
of the more persistent of the “ Americanists ” had conven-
iently failed to retain the matter of their teachings, during
the previous ten or fifteen years, and that those ebullitions
had been forgotten by such Catholic readers as are wont to
consult the columns of the press. Had such oblivion over-
taken all those utterances, however, the spirit of the false
“ Americanism ” would have manifested itself to all who per-
used such passages as that in the Preface to the original
Life of Father Hecker,., in which it was insisted that precisely
because the dogma of Papal Infallibility has been defined,
Catholics should now enjoy greater scope for individual
action — an action free from external direction. “There
have been epochs in history,” said the archbishop of St
Paul, “ where the Church, sacrificing her outposts and the

strong In Europe also, deserved to be condemned without delay or hesitation. . . . We
come now to Its nature. If by the name of * Americanism 1 are meant those peculiar
qualities of mind with which the peoples of America are endowed as other nations are with
other qualities; likewise if it means the condition of their cities or the laws and customs
which are peculiar to them ; that is, if it is a question of an Americanism in the political
sense, ‘There is no reason,’ writes the PontifT, ‘why it should be rejected by us.”
This must be understood to mean, as is only natural, after excluding the exaggerations of
the Americanists. Such are, for example, that of proposing the Constitution of the United
States as the ideal of political perfection to be imitated by all other nations, or that of per-
sons who, arguing from the fact that in the United States the Church, unhindered by the
laws of the civil Government, enjoys without obstacles the secure liberty of living and
acting according to the simple common law, infer that from America the model for the best
condition of the Church must be taken ; or that it is allowable or expedient, speaking
generally, that Church and State should be disunited and separated in other countries Just
as they are in the UnitediStares. Wherefore, as Leo XIII. said wisely on another occasion :
“ If in the United States the Church remains unharmed, if even it prospers and spreads,
that in every way is the result of the fruitfulness granted by God to His Church which,
when it is not opposed by others, when it hods no impediment, grows and expands through
its own power ; when, nevertheless, it would give far more copious fruit if, besides hav-
ing liberty, it enjoyed favor from the laws and patronage from the social power. (En-
cyclical Longlnqua to the bishops of the United States, 1895.). . . . Another exagger-
ation of the Americanists is that of exalting American democracy, representing it' as the
form of government most loved by the Church, indeed as the flower of its principles.
To arouse the idea or suspicion that the Church is a partisan of one form of government

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ranks of her skirmishers to the preservation of her central
and vital fortresses, put the brakes, through necessity, from
the nature of the warfare waged against her, upon individual
activity, and moved her soldiers in serried masses ; and then
it was the part and the glory of each one to move with the
column. .The need of repression has passed away . The
authority of the Church and of her /Supreme Head is beyond
danger of being denied or obscured , and each Christian soldier
may take to the field obeying the breathings of the Spirit of
Truth and piety within him , feeling that ivhat he may do he

should do The responsibility is upon each one ; the

indifference of others is no excuse. Said Father Hecker one
day to a friend : 1 There is too much waiting upon the action

of others. The layman waits for the priest, the priest for
the bishop, and the bishop for the Pope, while the Holy
Ghost sends down to all the reproof that He is prompting
each one, and no one moves for Him. * Father Hecker was
original in his ideas, as well as in his methods ; there was
no routine in him, mental or practical.” It is not improb-
able that it was this passage from the pen of His Grace of
St. Paul that drew from the Pontiff the following commen-
tary : “ It is of importance, therefore, to note particularly

an opinion, which is addressed as a sort of argument to urge

rather than another, or that it is better adapted to one form rather than to another, is a
wicked artifice contrary to reason and to history. . . . There is no question In the Apostolic
letter of political ' Americanism.’ It is a question of that * Americanism ’ which pre-
tends not merely to rejuveuate the Church by promoting its evolution in dogma and in
discipline in such a way that It may accord with the century, but also to renew Christian
life and regulate it according to the aspirations and demands of new times. Every cen-
tury, says ‘ Americanism,’ must have a special type of holiness. Ours demands that the
natural virtues should be more particularly cultivated, and that the first place should be
given to personal Initiative, or to the so-called spirit of individualism. It should, there-
fore, be active rather than passive, and, so far as possible, free from religious vows, inde-
pendent of all external authority, and subject almost solely to the Internal and personal
direction of the Holy Ghost, of whose language the soul is supposed to have perfect
knowledge. By this system, which is condemned in all its parts by the Apostolic Letter,
religious life would be reduced to a sort of Independent republican and democratic asceti-
cism, or if you prefer, to the transformation of the Protestant idea of ‘ free examination *
into a personal ‘ free sentiment,’ that should be then applied to the Christian and religi-
ous life of every one. .. . If Americanism has been condemned, whose fault is it? Cer-
tainly not that of the * enemies of the United States,’ to whom till the other day even the
existence of Father Hecker was unknown, and who, if they were Catholics, could not
avoid being delighted at seeing glorified the first ’saint ’ of the American Church. The
fault, if that term must be used, belongs alone to the friends and commentators of the Lift
of Hecker, who have repeatedly dignified his opinions with the name of ’ Americanism *
and have proposed him to the admiration and veneration of the faithful as the standard"
bearer of their new school.”

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POPE LEO xra. AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 345

the granting of such liberty to Catholics. For> they say, in
speaking of the infallible teaching of the Roman Pontiff \ that
after the solemn decision formulate din the Vatican Council , there
is no need of solicitude in that regard , and. , because of its now
being out of dispute , a wider field of thought and action is thrown
open to individuals . Truly this is a preposterous argumen-
tation. For if anything is suggested by the infallible teach-
ing of the Church, it is certain that no one should wish to
withdraw from it, nay, that all should strive to be thoroughly
imbued with, and be guided by its Spirit, so as to be the more
easily preserved from any private error whatever And His
Holiness adds : “ Qui sic arguunt , a providentis Dei sapient ia

discedunt admodum. For in willing that the authority and
teaching office of the Apostolic See should be more solemnly
asserted, God willed above all to guard more efficaciously
the minds of Catholics from the dangers of the present age.
A license which is often confounded with liberty, a craving
to put in a word on every topic, and the freedom of thinking
as one pleases and putting one’s thoughts in print, have cast
such dense darkness over men’s minds that never before was
there greater need for the existence and exercise of ecclesias-
tical authority to prevent them from running counter to con-
science and duty.” In several other reprobations of “ Amer-
icanistic” ideas, His Holiness paraphrases those notions
with words which, just as in this case of the Preface to the
Life of Father Hecker , are all but identical with utterances
of “ Americanist ” publicists. But if we were to grant that
it is allowable to credit Pope Leo XIII. with crass ignorance
of the state of affairs which he undertook to remedy, are we
to ascribe the same want of knowledge to all those American
bishops who, in their replies to the Apostolic Letter, pro-
claimed the fact of at least a limited circulation of the
stigmatized errors in the American Catholic community?
Of course the “ Americanists ” would have us ignore as of no
value the avowal of the bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province
of Milwaukee ; since, as the innovators insisted, these prelates
were “merely a few Germans in obscure dioceses” — as
though the most pronounced' Catholic opponent of the
Teutonic Idea would fail to recognize those bishops as*

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competent witnesses in regard to matters which are presented
to their observation. Archbishop Elder of Cincinnati was
not “ a German bishop of an obscure diocese ” ; and never-
theless he and his suffragans wrote to His Holiness : “The
errors you condemn were calculated to work great harm to
souls. Your Apostolic Letter, with its lucid explanation of
Catholic truth, will, we fell confident, end all future misunder-
standing. Roma locula est ; causa finita est.” And certainly
Archbishop Corrigan of New York and the prelates of his
province were not “ Germans in obscure dioceses ” ; but on
March 10, 1899, these bishops declared to the Holy See :
“ If Your Holiness had not opportunely come to our aid with
your admirable letter, how numerous might have been those
who, through ignorance rather than malice, would have been
taken in the snare ! The bishops and clergy would have had
a heavy task to keep the people far from error. ... We rejoice
greatly that by reason of your infallible teaching we will not
have to transmit to our successors the ungrateful task of
having to struggle with an enemy which perhaps would never
die ” (1).

Among all the luminaries of the Liberal school in Europe,
probably very few had even heard of “ Americanism,” when
the Pontifical condemnation of that vagary appeared ; but

(1) This letter of the bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of New York should be read
in its entirety : “ Most Holy Father : We cannot express in words the feelings of admira-
tion. of Joy, and of gratitude, with which our hearts have been penetrated on reading the
masterly and admirable letter which Your Holiness deigned to issue concerning what baa
been, for some time past, designated under the name of ‘ Americanism.’ With what
wisdom has Your Holiness jcnown how to summarize the multitude of fallacies and errors
which it has been sought to pass as good and Catholic doctrine under the specious title of
‘ Americanism ’ ! And at the same time, with what prudence, discretion, and gentleness,
together with force and clearness, has Your Holiness fulfilled the office of supreme and
infallible teacher ! Certainly this last emanation from the wisdom of Your Holiness is not
inferior to auy of the many which have excited the admiration of the nations during the
course of your glorious Pontificate. As for us, placed by the Holy Ghost as bishops to rule
the Church of God under the guidance of Your Holiness, we hasten to offer to you our
sentiments of unqualified adhesion. We receive in the most absolute manner, for ourselves
and for our clergy, for the religious orders and congregations working with us for the
salvation of souls, and also for our flocks, the doctrinal Letter Tcstem bcntwlciitiue sent
to us by Your Holiness. We accept it« and we make it wholly ours, word for word and
sentence for sentence, in the very same sense according to which Your Holiness, following
the tradition and wisdom of all Christian antiquity, understood and understands it, and
wishas it to be understood by all. We shall never be guilty of any reservation or tergiver-
sation. either directly or indirectly, in regard to it ; nor shall we tolerate such a course ou
the part of those who are under our care. Your Holiness has spoken ; therefore the ques-
tion is terminated. This thought gives us great satisfaction, and it was this satisfaction
that we wished to express in the first words of this letter. And we may now say that

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POPE LEO XIIL AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES 347

immediately the Masonic and Protestant journals of Italy,
France, England, and Germany, expressed their sympathy
with the alleged progressists whom the retrograde Vatican
was said to be persecuting. None of these effusions merits
citation ; but it may interest the reader to note the manner
in which the Papal pronouncement was received by those
nondescripts who so pathetically endeavor to vindicate for
themselves a right to be considered as Liberal, even while
they pose as Catholic. No sincerely Catholic periodicals or
journals would loan their columns for a ventilation of the
“ Liberal Catholic ” ideas ; but fortunately for the van-
ity of the purveyors of those theories, the heterodox and in-
differentist organs are ever ready to publish what promises
to injure Catholicism, while it increases their circulation.
Three of these periodicals, in England the Nineteenth Century
and the Contemporary Review , and in the United States the
North American Review , were made vehicles for the distribu-
tion of the latest concoction of “ Liberal Catholic ” poison
under the guise of a defence of “ Americanism.” The Nine-
teenth Centm'y , in its issue of May, 1899, enabled the Hon.
William Gibson, a gentleman whose ravings in the matter
of Lamennais we found it necessary to notice in our dis-

almost on Its first appearance, death has overtaken that monstrosity which. In order to
obtain a durable home among us, usurped the fair name of 4 Americanism * ; and It is to
Your Holiness that this happy result is due, for if you had not opportunely come to our aid
with your admirable letter, how numerous might have been those who, through ignorance
rather than malice, would have been taken in the snare ! The bishops and clergy would
have had a heavy task to keep the people far from error. Error would have been able,
little by little, always to take a greater hold ; and we would soon be designated by the
thoughtless as persons who are not Americans. Meanwhile the false * Americanism,’
understood like similar titles which have endured for ages among the nations to the great
detriment of souls, would have taken tranquil possession among us, ever increasing its
conquests in enormous proportions of time and place. Therefore we rejoice because of
your infallible teaching which has so effected that we will not be obliged to transmit to
our successors the ungrateful task of having to struggle with an enemy which perhaps
would never die. Now, with heads erect we can repeat that we also are Americans ; we
are Americans, and we glory in the fact. We glory in this fact because our nation is great
In its institutions and in its undertakings, great in Its development and in its activity ;
but in matters of religion, doctrine, discipline, morals, and Christian perfection, we glory
in entire obsequiousness to the Holy See. For these reasons we are, and shall ever be,
most grateful to Your Holiness for the signal benefit which your Letter Testem henevolen -
ticB has conferred on us and on all the Catholics of America. By the testimony of your
kindness. Your Holiness has uprooted this cockle from the field of wheat, as soon as ft
appeared. May God preserve, etc. ! For the Right Reverend Bishops of this Ecclesiastical
Province, the Most Humble Servant of Your Holiness, Michael Augustine, Archbishop
-of New York.”

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sertation on the great unfortunate (1), to prove that the lapse
of time had not augmented his store of common sense. A
writer who thinks that the great Napoleon’s “ war of libera-
tion ” in Italy — a war which “ demonstrated the utility of
an organization like that of the Carbonari” — was followed
by a great mistake on the part of the Pontiffs who “ might
at this time have succeeded in winning for themselves a great
position as the representatives of a great idea ” ; a writer who
represents Lamennais as the victim of “ the cowardly and
underhand operations ” of men whose religion was “ identi-
fied with the divine right of kings ” ; might well be expected
to see in every teaching of Leo XIII. an attempt to crush
all independent thought in man. According to this honor-
able gentleman, the numerous Encyclicals of Leo XIII. have
produced but one effect ; they have demonstrated that the
Church so distrusts all progress in science, that no true
devotee of science can be a faithful Catholic. And Mr.
Gibson finds the most conclusive proof of this Pontifical
oppression in the condemnation of that “ Americanist ”
tenet, according to which “ the manner and method hitherto
adopted to effect the return of dissidents should henceforth be
abandoned for another ” (2). The writer in the Contemporary
Review , also of May, 1899, is anonymous ; but he claims to
be a Catholic, albeit “ independent.” He regards the con-
demnation of “ Americanism ” as consistent with a system
which gives a place in the Index to the work of nearly every
Catholic who is sufficiently brave to write on scientific matters.
He asserts that the Church is now, if not formally, at least
practically, divorced from science ; the two are “ separated at
least a mensa et thoro." The Civiltd Caftolica thus comments
on this aberration : “ He utters an untruth and he calumniates
the Church, if he refers to real science which is the certain
and evident knowledge of a thing through a true knowledge
of its causes ; the science which does not rest on nothing,
and is not bolstered by silly theories and gratuitous hypo-
theses, but is derived from unshakeable principles, and

(1) See our Vol. v., p. 280, 287.

(2) Since such are the views of Mr. Gibson, the Review of Reviews might well express
its surprise on learning that the gentleman still remains in the fold of Catholicism.

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POPE LEO XIII. AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 349

deals with facts rigorously established — the science, in
short, which is taught us by those who have a right to speak
for it. From this science the Church is not separated —
rather does she make it her own, promote it, bless it,
and desire that it be cultivated with all zeal by her children.
Far from plucking from the brows of real scholars a
single leaf from the bays of learning that adorn them, she
would have new laurels of still more glorious conquests
added thereto. If, however, we are to judge by the names
of 1 our best Catholic writers,1 the giants ‘ whose heads
tower above the crowd, which we find cited in the pages of
the Contemporary , it is evident that the anonymous writer
does pot know what real science is, and, as a consequence, who
are the true scholars. We are far indeed from wishing to
detract in any way from the scientific and literary attain-
ments of a Semeria and a Genocchi ; but to present these
two young priests to the English public as ‘ the best thinkers,
the only true scholars, the giants of science among Italian
Catholics,1 is certainly an exaggeration which borders on
the ridiculous. It is a little remarkable that the anony-
mous Contemporary writer, while knowing, or pretending to
know, a number of giants in France, Germany, Italy, and
the United States, is a complete stranger to those of England.
He never quotes them — and he is wise, for were he to quote
English ‘ giants 1 of the calibre of the Loisys, Schells,
Semerias, and De Wits, he would be simply laughed
at by every Englishman who knows anything about the
.scientific history of his country.11 Certainly the surviv-
ing “ Americanists 11 must have wished that they had been
spared the ignominy of such defences as those advanced
by Mr. Gibson and by the anonym of the Contemporai'y ;
and we would fain believe that few of them were grateful
for the encouragement tendered in the North American
Review (July, 1899) by Dr. William Barry, an English
priest whose pen had hitherto done excellent service in
the cause of religious truth, but who then announced to
the world an alleged discovery of a Spanish diplomatic
complicity in the matter of the Letter Testem benevolent ice.
According to this English champion of the “ Americanist ”

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idea, the condemnation of that idea was the work of “ the*
party which in France has pursued Dreyfus to extermination ;
which in Italy is accused of coquetting with Socialists to
overturn the monarchy ; and which saw itself confronted
with a new enemy, and that enemy America.” And why
did this party, these conspirers against the Savoyard of the
Quirinal, regard “ Americanism ” as an enemy ? Dr. Barry
finds the reason in the fact that “ The Franco-Latin world
had been shaken to its foundations by the triumph of an
English-speaking race over Spain ; and if anything was to be
undertaken by way of safeguard or revenge, American Catho-
lics stood in the front, the first line of battle, resting on Borne.
At Borne, accordingly, they have been assailed.” AfteV this
malevolent identification of the French Catholic party with
the Jew-baiters whose chief leaders are by no means prom-
inent in Catholic circles, and many of whom are no more
Catholic than are those foremost of Anti-Semites, the
Communist Bochefort, and the German court-preacher,
Stacker; after this slur on those who would restore the
Papacy to its proper independence ; after this sop to the
ignorant prejudices of that Celtico-Anglo-Saxonico-Dano-
Norman stock which a defiance of historical truth terms the
“ Anglo-Saxon ” race ; Dr. Barry’s discovery thus unfolds
itself : “ The Society of Jesus opened fire upon Liberalism,
an ancient enemy ; the Dominicans were solicitous for the
credit of the Master of the Sacred Palace (Father Lepidi,
who granted the Imprimatur to the book by Magnien).
There was another place in Borne, too, that of the Spanish
embassy, whose tenants were not idle. The high Boman
society was led by Spaniards, and its tone was violent against
America.” In plain words, therefore, Dr. Barry would
ask us to regard the Apostolic Letter Testem bcnevolentice
as the work of supposedly retrograde, absolutistic, vindictive,
and ignorant Jesuits; of presumedly timorous and vain-
glorious Dominicans ; and of a Spanish government, most of
the members of which, like nearly all their predecessors
during the now closing century, were votaries of the Dark
Lantern. And according to the “ Anglo-Saxon ” cleric with
a Norman-Irish name, the Apostolic Letter has resulted

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principally in an acquisition of “ everlasting honor ” for those
“Americanist” leaders who have (so superfluously) “shown
the world how they can be at once fervent Catholics and ,
loyal Americans ” — for those victims of European obscuran-
tism who “ in the name of America have undergone a moral
martyrdom,” Such might have been the chief consequence
of the Leonine condemnation of “ Americanism,” had that
vagary been, as Dr. Barry afterward asserted in the Liver-
pool Catholic Times , “ a scarecrow set up under that name,
and manufactured in Paris ” (1).

It is well to note, however, that in an article which this
“Americanist” champion published in the Contempwary
Review simultaneously with the one in the North American
— an article which professedly descanted on the “ Troubles

(l) The Church Progress of Sept. 10, 1899, says : 41 Now that we have discovered that we
are in the category of those who know nothing about Christian liberty, who detest the
American Constitution as the work of Antichrist, and who hate Englaud because of her
freedom, we venture the hope that Dr. Barry is done telling Americans what 4 American-
ism’ is, and where ‘Americanism’ came from Dr. Barry assures his American

brethren that they have had nothing lu common with the condemned opinions, and that
there is nothing to be avoided or corrected. Hitherto, we were wont to suppose that a certain
amount of human prudence, at least, was exercised by the Holy See before condemning or
locating any set of errors, and that its practice was more conscientious and more methodi-
cal than to be driven 4 by sheer force of lungs ’ to And error where error did not exist. It
was very old-fashioned, to be sure ; but we believed that were error to begin spreading, for
instance, among the Catholics of Austria, the Church would hardly be satisfying her obli-
gation as custodian of the deposit of faith, by sending her condemnation to Honolulu.
Those of us who are prepared to accept Dr. Barry’s explanation of the proscription of
‘Americanism’ will certainly be ready for Just such an hypothesis as that we have men-
tioned. ... We do not wonder that general readers arise from the perusal of such lan-
guage as Dr. Barry’s with the conviction that the Catholic Church is full of foolish and
dishonest people, and that the supreme authority permits itself to be made the tool of their
foolishness and their dishonesty. It must be quite painful to an up-to-date Anglo-Saxon
like Dr. Barry to have to notice the ignorance of the Roman officials. What strangely
uncultured intellects these Latins have, anyhow, that, when we talk error or heresy, they
can’t see that we are only poking fun at somebody 1 Most devoutly do we hope that the
Apostolic See will make itself acquainted with the labyrinthal eccentricities of the American
mind, before it risks another Encyclical, warning us what to beware of and to correct. A
tremendous responsibility would be lifted from the shoulders of those zealous men who at
present find it ‘ an imperative duty ’ to amend or to explain away the Pope’s mistakes.
Doubtless Dr. Barry would be prepared to say that he had spoken with some of those whose
names were chiefly associated with the proscribed views, and that they emphatically denied
ever having held them. Of course, they emphatically denied it. The distinction between
right and fact is an ancient but very common weapon of defence. Every second man
whose opinion* have met with the Holy See’s disapproval will tell you that Rome did not
understand him. ... If, as often as a Papal Encyclical were issued, we were prepared wl»h
an interpretation, neutralizing its point and palpably foreign to its spirit, we might, at an
opportune moment, gain some cheap publicity. We might even have the honor of being
classed with those progressive spirits who, on their own showing, are eternally rescuing
the Church from collision with the Judgments of advanced thought. But we think we can
forego that dazzling distinction. We are satisfied to be taught by the Church : we don’t
seek to be her teacher.”

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of Catholic Democracy ” — he presented “ Americanism ” as
anything but a “scarecrow set up under that name.” The
following passages alone would suffice to show that “Amer-
icanism,” as understood by the “ obscurantists,” is a real
entity, and that Dr. Barry is saturated with its poison.
“ The years of Leo XILL, shining once with all the milder
lights of reconciliation, are drawing toward sunset, and
clouds come up from the north and the west. Secessions
have taken place ; books are denounced to the Index ; per-
sons fall under suspicion ; the battle of the nations, never
quite asleep, has broken out afresh in Rome. . . . ‘ Reaction ’
is the cry of assault and defence. The elements in conflict
are many ; it is a tangled situation, which we may view from
the standing ground of theology, politics, or historical criti-
cism. . . . The American demand — for there is a demand —
turns not upon doctrine, but upon government ; it is, in a
high and important sense, political ; but it has no concern
with revolutions in dogma. . . . My drift is to explain why
many of us who know the Church from inside , and who see
what the fortunes of religion have been since private judg-
ment took hold of it in Northern countries, are Catholics still
despite imperfections , abuses , tyrannies , and all the evil , great
or petty , which has encrusted itself during ages on a venerable
institution . . . . The nations are perishing. That any large
number of men and women will be drawn to the Church by
arguments , by decrees , which bear on minute details in the text
or the history of the Bible , or which deal with recondite points
of dogma and rarefied systems of philosophy, it is impossible
to imagine . The issues of life and death are elsewhere. . . .
We are constrained to cry aloud and spare not ; to warn
those who threaten liberty in the name of Absolutism
(in the name of common sense, who are these parties ?) that
they are darkening the door of faith, and repeating their
ancient error which confounded religion with dynasties, as
now they would confound it with national prejudice and
local interests (of course Dr. Barry and the other “ Amer-
icanists ” are guiltless of this crime). It is well that they
should learn that the youthful peoples who speak our tongue
do not mean to be ruled by Philip II. from his tomb in the Es -

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POPE LEO xm. AND THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 353

- curial ; that they prefer Stephen Langton and Magna Charta
to Spanish and Renaissance methods, and will ever do
so.” The foolish howl concerning the tomb of Philip II.
of Spain may be pardoned as a mere manifestation of
“ Anglo-Saxon ” spleen ; but it is not easy to qualify, within
ike limits of ordinary courtesy, an ebullition of contempt
for the Latin races with which Dr. Barry panders to “ Anglo-
Saxon ” and German arrogance as he perorates for the recog-
nition of “ an English or German school ” which should
at least rank with “ the Scotists and Thomists who once, long
ago, fought their battles in the arena of the Vatican.” Hav-
ing reminded us that the pre-eminently freedom-loving and
noble-minded English-speaking peoples “live under the
Common Law,” while the wretched Latins groan “ under the
Roman,” the English “ Americanist ” hurls this pronuncia -
miento : “ Futile indeed will be the task (who has under-
taken it ?) of those who attempt to persuade us that the
laws we have inherited from our Catholic ancestors are not
preferable to a jurisprudence derived from imperial Caesar
and heathen Rome.” This deliberate concealment of the
fact that the jurisprudence of the Latin nations is no more
derived from that of heathen Rome than is the Common Law
which is presented for our veneration ; this lamentable
indication that Dr. Barry wished to forget that the mediae-
val and modern Roman Law of the Latin peoples resulted
from the transforming action of Catholicism on the ancient
Roman jurisprudence ; this insinuation that when compared
with the Common Law of blissful Anglo-Saxondom, the
fundamental codes of the Latins are heathen in nature and
“tendency ; may flatter the prejudices of the more ignorant
among those Americans who desire that Anglo-American
Alliance for which Dr. Barry seems to hold a brief, but the
cause of “ Americanism ” is not strengthened by this tra-
vesty of the truth.

What will be the effect of the Leonine condemnation of
the so-called “ Americanism ” ? Unless we are prepared to
admit, with Dr. Barry, that “the plane of thought (of the
American Catholics) was unexplored by the officials of the
Curia ” ; and that Pope Leo XIII. was utterly deficient in

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even a commonplace knowledge of religious matters in the*
United States — a want under which he would have labored,
had he called “ attention to things to be avoided and cor-
rected,*’ when those things were fantasies or inventions of
hallucinated or dishonest Europeans ; we must believe that
the consequences of the Letter Testem benevolentice will be
many and beneficial. One great and practical consequence,
a more intimate appreciation of the fact that Catholic truth
is ever the same in all lands and in all times, has already
been observed, and has been thus noted by the Civilta Cat -
tolica : “ The practical lesson which we must all draw from
Leo XIII. *s Apostolic Letter is that Catholic principles do
not change, whether through the passing of years, or the
changing of countries, or new discoveries, or motives of util-
ity. They are always the principles that Christ taught, that
the Church made known, that Popes and Councils defended,
that the Saints loved, that the Doctors demonstrated. As
they are, they must be taken or left. Whoever accepts them
in all their fulness and strictness is a Catholic ; whoever
hesitates, staggers, adapts himself to the times, makes com-
promises, may call himself by what name he will, but before
God and the Church he is a rebel and a traitor.”

CHAPTER XVI.

POPE LEO XIII. AND SOCIALISM.

The Encyclical Rerum novarum , published by Leo XIII.
on May 15, 1891, and dealing with the relations between
capital and labor, was a veritable programme for a recon-
ciliation of these apparently irreconcilable factors of mod-
ern society. But before we enter on an analysis of the
teachings of our Pontiff in the matter of the great social
question of our day — convictions which had been presented
at least in germ in several of the pastorals of the archbishop-
bishop of Perugia, it may be well to consider the signifi-
cance of the term “ Socialism.” In its more general sense,
the term indicates certain theoretical and practical efforts

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to remedy, by means of social institutions, the evils now
predominant in society. Such a Socialism as this the Church
must necessarily favor — witness, in the practical order, the
monastic system, and the Jesuit “ Reductions ” of Paraguay ;
and in the line of theory, the Civitas Solis of Campanella,
and the Utopia of St. Thomas More. It is not this species
of Socialism, however, that has become an object of distrust
to such minds as are still properly conservative at the close
of the nineteenth century, whether those minds be Catholic,
heterodox, or pagan. As the term is now generally under-
stood, Socialism is a species of philosophy which inculcates
the necessity of destroying the now-existing society, with an
intention of forming a new order of things on its ruins. This
idea, until our day resident only in the domain of theory,
has now become a real danger ; and all the more easily,
because, on account of the present prevalence of religious
indifference, Socialism seems to have reason on its side.
Remembering the words with which St. Paul characterized
the pagan times in which he lived, “ You were at that time
without Christ. . . and without God in this world ” (1), we
may define Socialism as the philosophy of those moderns,
whose souls know not God, and who, being strangers to
resignation, would form a society founded solely on a hope
of enjoying unto satiety the things of earth. Philosophi-
cally speaking, Socialism is Pantheism reduced to practice ;
the doctrine of continuous progress, of the legitimacy of
evil inclinations, and many other ravings, are taught also
by Saint-Simonism, Fourierism, and Communism, all of
which are derived from Pantheism and Naturalism, which in
their turn are the progeny of Protestantism. It is not re-
served for men like Bossuet to demonstrate the logical
sequence between Luther’s war on the Papacy and the more
modern war on social order; the arch-revolutionist, Louis
Blanc, averred : “ The revolution prepared by philosophy,,
begun by theology, and continued by statecraft, must finish
in Socialism. Protestantism was the first step toward
Anarchy ; Luther led straight to Munzer .” A logical system
like that of Socialism cannot be combatted successfully by

(1) Ephc#iam% li., 12.

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so illogical a system as Protestantism — a conglomeration
of conceits which was born in a contempt of logic ; the sole
invincible foe of Socialism is the true Church of Christ,
teaching and acting according to the principles of the divine
revelation which was entrusted to her alone. The eminent
Protestant publicist, the Count de Tocqueville, admitted :
“ Catholicism alone, by her union of all classes of society at
the foot of the same altar — a union such as they present in
the eyes of God, solved the great problem of human dignity
and of hierarchical dependence.” Coming now to a brief
consideration of the history of Socialism, the most intellectual
of its votaries whom we meet are Robert Owen in England,
and Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Proudhon, in France. Owen,
whom some regard as the founder of Socialism, published a
manifesto in 1840, in which he stigmatized as false all the
social systems which had hitherto obtained ; all the history
of the past, he insisted, is but a narrative of " the irrational
period of humanity.” History has been, he well declares,
an interminable series of wars and massacres ; it shows us
humanity in a constant state of opposition to all that might
work for its happiness ; each one is always fighting against
the rest — “ one against all, and all against one.” He essayed
a new system as a remedy for these evils, the scene of the
•experiment being at New Harmony, in Indiana ; but finan-
cial ruin and ridicule were his sole rewards. The basis of
Gwen’s society was the life in community ; there was to be no
private property ; education was to be the same for all.
As for Saint-Simon, who was the first of the French Social-
ists, chronologically speaking, and the no less celebrated
Fourier, we have already detailed their hallucinations (1).
Proudhon, easily the most intellectual and best equipped of
the entire school of Socialists, would have based all social
economy on mutual justice — a justice, he believed, asserting
itself little by little, amid a number of economic contradic-
tions, the most important of which is the antithesis of
property and also of community. According to Proudhon,
“ property lias a just basis, namely, liberty ; but it becomes
unjust, when it becomes capital. On the other hand,

(1) Vol. v., p. 378, et seqq.

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community of goods, although it is derived from the just
idea of association, is in itself an injustice.” When asked
how he could reconcile these “ antitheses,” he replied that
“ synthesis ” would effect the reconciliation ; the “ synthe-
sis” was furnished by the idea of “ mutuality.” He . ex-

cogitated an ideal society, formed of “ free and independent
laborers,” making one family, with no capital besides their
tools of trade, and such like. Hours of work were to be
equal, and wages the same. The State would be composed
of working persons alone ; there were to be no idle con-
sumers. Central government would be unknown ; but a
local police and magistracy would be necessary. As for
property, according to Proudhon, “ that is theft” As for
God, “ that is evil itself.” As for capital, “ that is truly the
infamous one” It is noteworthy that like the Reformers of
the sixteenth century, who agreed in destruction, but could
not agree in constructing, the Socialists have such divergent
notions of the essential constituents of their expected mil-
lenium, that it is difficult to define their aspirations with any
degree of precision. Perhaps the most satisfactory idea of
their general ambition is found in the programme which is
often presented as the basis of the future social edifice —
“ the free consent of all.” In his admirable work on Social-
ism, Count Edward Soderini thus descants on the difference
between French and German applications of the pestiferous
theory : “ French Socialism, while elaborating theoretical
systems, has nevertheless sought, in order to render them
acceptable to the masses, to bring them to the concrete, and
to apply them immediately. On the other hand, German
Socialism has assumed a shape more definitely scientific ; and
while in France the Socialists for a long time sought to show
themselves humanitarian rather than speculative, in Germany
the matter has proceeded very differently. Learned men,
devoted either to politics or to the study of public economy,
have unfolded the banner of discontent ; but instead of
repeating with Proudhon and Rousseau that all economic
ills are derivable from faulty social organization, they have
preferred asserting that the economic systems prevailing have
been the true cause of social corruption. Hence, while the

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former hastened to demand the destruction of the State, the
latter, on the contrary, have declared themselves its partisans
in order to get the upper hand in it, to reform it to their own
liking, especially by the application of a wholly different
system of political economy. Protectionists have affirmed
that social salvation is to be found in a system of protective
duties, and hence through intervention, more or less pro-
nounced, on the part of the State. Somewhat nearer akin to
them are the so-called Katheder or ‘pedant’ Socialists, in
whose eyes the great remedy consists in the State’s interven-
ing with intent to recast the whole economic situation. Then
come Free-traders, who afford lavish assurance that the
problem would be happily solved were only the most ample
and unlimited freedom of competition adopted, and the action
of the State dwindled down to the narrowest range possible.
Some even have pushed matters so far as to demand the
complete abolition of the State. But while they have been
thus wrangling among themselves, and their quarrels, break-
ing over the borders of Germany, have been embraced by the
several economic schools of all Europe, German Socialism
has burst forth in sudden and full maturity. It has stood
forth as a body of doctrines, or rather a creed , which, present-
ed previously under various guises and elaborated gradually,
is found thoroughly condensed in the manifesto recently pub-
lished by the directing centres of revolutionary Socialism,
all of which now receive their password from Bebel and his
adherents. . . . The Socialist State must begin by taking
possession of the great industrial establishments ; expro-
priating on the ground of public utility the actual owners,
who are to be indemnified according to conditions to be deter-
mined, either by bonds bearing slight interest or by an
annuity payable up to the death of the respective owners*
This only in case of a peaceful solution of the question. But
if, contrariwise, the Socialist workmen have to attain to
victory by means of a violent revolution, the measures would
change and might prove far more radical in regard to capital-
ists. The manifesto does not state in what such radical
reform is to consist ; but we are led to understand that they
would not shrink from the revolutionary enormities of the

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last century, reserving the fate that then befel the nobles,
the rich, and the clergy, for such landlords and middle-class
folk who should refuse to relinquish voluntarily their prop-
erty to their new masters ” (1).

Now for a few words concerning the connection between
Socialism and Freemasonry. In his monumental work on
Secret Societies (2), Deschamps demonstrates, by means
of an analysis of the Masonic Rituals, and of the writings
of the chief luminaries of the sect, that its doctrines
are radically destructive of the rights of property, whatever
may be the secret and natural proclivities of the more
wealthy and therefore more “ conservative ” adepts. But let
us listen rather to the avowals of conspicuous contemporary
Masonic authorities. The Socialistic manifesto published
by the Revolte of Geneva, on the occasion of the working-
men's Congress held in Marseilles in Sept., 1879, began with
this fanfaronade : “ Considering that every man, by the very
fact of his being a man, has a right from his birth to the
same satisfaction of his desires that any one else enjoys,
etc.” Here we have the doctrine of the “ Rights of Man,”
according to which emanation of 1793, the right to property
was one of the “ natural rights ” of every citizen, to whom
the State was to assign his quota of other men’s goods ;
“ the Jacobins cried loudly for equality of right, the sole right
compatible with individual property. Condorcet (the author
of the above-mentioned doctrine) wras more revolutionary
when he said : ‘ Equality in fact, the ultimate end of

the social art ’ ” (3). Hearken to Ragon, the founder of the
“ Trinosophs ” of Paris, whose work was solemnly approved
by the Grand Orient of France in 1840, “as written by
a profoundly-instructed brother,” and was afterward sent
to a second edition by the Capitular Lodge of Nancy, with
orders that it should be termed “ a sacred edition, for the pur-
pose of reconstructing unity of thought, from which eventually
will come unity of power and of action.” This authoritative
Ragon tells us : “ Masonry alone is capable of realizing that

(1) Socialism and Catholicism. Rome, 1895.

(2) Secret Societies and Society ; or. The Philosophy of Contemporary History , Bk. i.,
ch. 6. Paris, 1882, Sixth Edition.

(3) Malon ; Exposition of the Socialist Schools. Paris, 1872.

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grand and beautiful social unity which was conceived by
Jaunez, Saint-Simon, Owen, and Fourier. Let the Masons
only will it, and the generous conceptions of these philan-
thropic thinkers will cease to be vain utopias ” (1). Saint-
Simon is regarded by Masonic authors as one of the
luminaries of their order ; and the infamous Enfantin (2)r
quite naturally a Masonic adept, thus unites his patriarch
with the Carbonari and the Jacobins : “ Those who sympa-

thize to-day with Saint-Simon, if they are thirty or forty
years old, will have sympathized with Foy, Manuel, and
Lafayette ; and if they are sixty, they will have sympathized
with Mirabeau, Saint-Just, and I might also say, with
Robespierre ” (3). The chief founders of Fourierism were
Masons, and the Lodges were their proselytizers ; this
is especially true of Jaunez and Pompery (4). Eugene Sue,,
the first of Socialistic romancers, received special honora
from the Belgian Lodges in 1845 ; and in his letter of thanks
to the Lodge Perseverance of Antwerp, written on Jan. 13,
1845, he congratulated himself on the fact that “ the Masonic
Lodges were at the head of the Liberal Socialist Party.”
On Nov. 7, 1866, the United Lodges of Parfaite Intelligence
and V Etoile , both of Liege, were affiliated to the Lodge of
Philadelphs in London ; and they avowed that their object
was to further the work of " Militant and Progressive
Masonry,” according to the following programme : “ To

banish from the human mind all vain thoughts of a future
life, and the fetichism of a Divine Providence succoring
humanity in its miseries ; to crush the pride of money and
of privileges ; to transform charity to the poor, as a thing
which humiliates them ; to procure for the poor the rights
which will elevate them ; to equalize all intelligences by
instruction, all fortunes by a proper equilibrium of salaries
(sic), and all protections by laws which treat all alike ; and
finally to realize justice here on earth, instead of promising
it in a future and unknown world” (5). In 1868, when there
was question of revising the statutes of Belgian Masonry,

(1) Course of Ancient and Modern Initiations , p. 46. (2) See our VoJ. v., p. 880.

(8) Letter to General Saint -Cur.

<4) See the Globe. Journal des Initiations , 1839, p. 170 ; 1840, p. 144, 168, 210.

(5) Cited by Le Monde , Jan. 16, 1867.

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Brother Jacobus, in an address to the Lodge Amis Philan-
thropes of Brussels, said : “ The transformation of charity

into emancipation, of beneficence into social institutions, of
protection into definitive freedom — that is the doctrine
which may be termed * practical Socialism,’ and which we
desire to express clearly in the very first Article of the
General Statutes of Belgian Freemasonry” (1). In its
issues of August and November, 1879, the Monde Mafonnique ,
which disputes with the Chaine <1 Union the right to be
considered the most reliable Masonic* organ in the world,
told how the Lodges of Paris were about to found a “ Superior
School of Positive Science,” destined to propagate Social-
ism scientifically among the members of the “ intelligent
classes.” And why not? Did not Brother Jules Ferry
proclaim, in 1875, the identity of Masonry and Social-
ism? (2). The first German Socialist, Weitling, who began
his propaganda in Switzerland and Germany in 1837, or-
ganized his societies on the model of the Illuminati and the
Carbonari ; and the “'Musical Associations,” founded by
him, were Masonic Lodges in thin disguise (3). Finally, we
would ask the reader to heed the remarks of the Monde Ma f-
onnique , as it eulogizes Proudhon in its issue of Dec., 1881 :
“ Masonry never forgets Proudhon ; and when the celebrated
publicist died, in 1865, Massol was charged with the task of
interpreting the regrets of us all, and of showing how the life
and work of Proudhon conformed to the aspirations of
Masonry. ... In spite of his various occupations, Proudhon
never grew lukewarm in his love for Masonry. Read the
following page, written by him at the close of his life, a page
which was a precious encouragement to the friends of pro-
gress.” And then we are treated to a morsel which is as
Proudhonesque as it is Masonic. Since the accredited
organs of Masonry assert that the work of the patriarch of
Socialism “ conformed to the aspirations of Masonry,” we
are not surprised when we read that on March 4, 1882, in
the Lodge Libre Pensee of Aurillac, Brother Paul Roques,

(1) Cited by La Patrieot Bourges, Oct., 1868.

(2> See the Chaine d'TJnion , 1877, p. 181.

(3) Frost ; The Secret Societies of the European Revolution , Vol. it., p. 268. London,.
1876.

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after reminding his brethren that the French Bevolution
was the work of their order, declared : “ The past is a guar-
antee of what you will do in the future. The task of Free-
masonry is far from finished. After having effected the
Political Bevolution, Freemasonry must now undertake the
Social Bevolution ” (1).

The Encyclical j Rerum novarum is at once a forcible
arraignment of Socialism at the tribunal of religion and
reason, and a guide for Catholics when they find themselves
confronted by the social questions of these days. That
a “ redoubtable conflict ” now subsists among the social
classes ; and that this conflict is due to a too great concen-
tration of wealth in the hands of a few, to the increasing
exigencies of the workers, to the closer union of workers
among themselves, but above all, to the corruption so pre-
valent in modern society ; Pope Leo XIII. cannot, if he
would, avoid perceiving. As in the fulfilment of his Apos-
tolic duty, His Holiness approaches the problems which
are entailed by the social question, he realizes that these
problems are both difficult and dangerous. Their difficulty
is evident to the most superficial thinker ; they are dangerous,
because the revolutionary spirit now so rampant profits by
their difficulty to foment disorder. But the Koman Pon-
tiff must speak, since the working classes are in so many
lands “ in a situation of unmerited misfortune and misery.”
His Holiness discerns the causes of this situation in the
disappearance of the mediaeval guilds which protected the
workingman ; in the present non-existence of religious prin-
ciple in civil jurisprudence ; and in the consequent isolation
of the workingman as he is oppressed by “ irrepressible com-
petition ” and by “ employers too often inhuman/’ Then there
is usury, always condemned by the Church, and which appears
every day in new form ; and there is also “ the monopoly of
labor, and of the fruits of trade,” possessed by a few rich ones
“ who impose an almost servile yoke on an infinite multitude
of laborers.” For these evils Socialism proposes a remedy in
the shape of an abolition of private property, and a State-
ownership of everything ownable — a system which would

(1) Chaine d' Union, July, 1882.

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POPE LEO xni. AND SOCIALISM. 363'

not only annihilate present proprietary rights, but would
ultimately injure the workingman. “ The right of private

proprietorship is according to the Natural Law ; ” a brute,
governed entirely by instinct, attains his end by a transient
use of present things, whereas man, endowed with reason,
“ by virtue of this prerogative, is capable not only of using
the things around him, but also of acquiring a perpetual
right to them.” To a certain extent, man is a law and
providence unto himself, subjected, of course, to the Supreme
Providence of God ; nor can the Socialists reasonably ap-
peal to a Providence of the State.” The State’s existence is
of later date than that of man ; long before the State received
its being, man “ had acquired the right to live, and to
defend his existence.” Nor can it be objected that since the
Scriptures tell us that the fulness of the earth was given
to the children of men, private proprietorship must be
wrong. The Bible “ tells us merely that God did not assign
any part of the earth to this or that particular individual —
that, on the contrary, God wished to leave the limitations
of property to human enterprise and to the ordinances of the
peoples.” Even when the land is divided among various
owners, it serves', directly or indirectly, to the benefit of all ;
in fact, we may say “ in all truth, that labor is the universal
means with which all provide what is needed for life, whether
that labor be exercised on one’s own bit of land, or in some lu-
crative occupation, the remuneration for which ds drawn from
the many products of the earth — products which are exchanged
for the things produced by some other kind of labor.” When
a man has applied his intelligence to the cultivation of some
bit of the earth, to which no other man has a better right, he
acquires an inviolable right to that estate ; “ for those fields,
under the hand of the cultivator, have changed their nature ;
they were wild, and now they are fertile. Would justice
allow a stranger to appropriate that soil which has been
improved by the sweat of another’s labor ? ” As for the
rights of property, when considered in reference to the
family, we must remember that the family existed by
natural right , before the State, and independently of the
State ; and in this domestic society, “ a society very small

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undoubtedly, but nevertheless real, there must be recog-
nized certain rights and duties which are absolutely in-
dependent of the State.” Among these rights, that of
proprietorship must be counted as “ possessed by man,
considered as head of a family.” Therefore the Pontiff
concludes that “paternal authority cannot be abolished
or absorbed by the State ” ; the children, a kind of extension
of the personality of the parent, are incorporated into civil so-
ciety only “by the medium of that domestic society in which
they were born.” Here we perceive the monstrous injustice
of the Socialistic idea which would substitute a Providence
of the State for that of the parent. And the consequences of
such a substitution are as patent as their injustice : “ Per-
turbation in every rank of society ; a hateful servitude for
all citizens ; an open door to all jealousies and discontents ;
talents deprived of their necessary stimulants, and there-
fore the sources of prosperity abolished ; in fine, instead of
the desired equality, an equality in every kind of misery.”
Having shown that the Socialistic theory of collective
proprietorship is untenable, Leo XIH., in the plenitude of
his Pontifical right and of his Apostolic duty, proceeds to
point out the remedies for the present social miseries.
To secure an amelioration of the present conditions, “the
intervention of governments, of the rich, of employers,
and of the workingmen themselves, is certainly indispensa-
ble ” ; but all* the efforts of these powers will be futile,
without the concurrence of the Church (1). The first thing

(1) “On opposite sides, two schools or two parties are bent on representing Catholicism
or 8ocial Christianity as a sort of purely lay and earthly doctrine, stripped of all supernat-
ural elements, entirely devoted to the solution of a painful problem by means of human
activity. Those who will not accept Social Christianity, because they bate Christ’s religion,
and those who will not a<*cept Christian Socialism because they hate the mere thought of
anorganic reform of society, agree with certain men of more pronounced zeal, but ignor-
ant in their good will, in order to deprive this great movement of its true sense and imports
To bring down religion to an earthly level ; to efface, or at least put in the background, all
supernatural elements of Christianity; to treat dogma as old-fashioned rubbish, which is
preserved through a sort of pious weakness for the past ; to make human solidarity the alpha
and omega of morality, without resting it on the fatherhood of God revealed by the bro-
ther^ >od of Christ ; to transform the Church into an immense Friendly or Benefit Society ;
to wish to perform the miracle of human love in the sphere of men’s interests, after having
rejected the miracle of divine love on the Cross; in a word to pretend to renew humanity,
to establish the reign of justice and charity on the earth without the help of those great
deeds which contain all salvation, thesalvatlon of the species as that of the individual, such-
is the vague, unhealthy dream of minds who think they can kill two birds with one stone, un-
christianize the Church, and with it regenerate the world. They would not all define with

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lor the discontented to remember is that “ grief and suffer-
ing are the appanage of humanity ” ; to attempt an entire
suppression of this inheritance is purely chimerical. In the
state of innocence, had it endured, labor would have been a
pleasure ; after the fall of man, labor became one of the
inevitable expiations of sin. But coming to the very heart
of the present question, His Holiness says that its capital
error “ is to suppose that the rich and the poor are born
enemies of each other ; on the contrary, they are destined 4
by nature to help each other in a perfect equilibrium ; there
can be no capital without labor, and no labor without
capital.” As to the conflict of to-day* “ Christianity amply
and multifariously provides for its termination.” Manual
labor is honorable ; “ but it is shameful and inhuman to use
men as though they were mere instruments of gain, and to.
esteem them merely in accordance with the strength of their
arms.” On the other hand, the workingman should remem-
ber his obligation to furnish the labor demanded by a free and
just contract ; he should in no way injure his employer,
either by violence, or by seditious insistence on presumed
rights, or by hearkening to the seducers of the people. In
considering this question, the Pontiff does not omit the part
which pertains by right to the State — not to this or that par-
ticular State, but to “ every government which acts in accor-
dance with the dictates of natural reason, and of the divine
teachings.” It is the duty of the State “ to see that public
and private prosperity flow without effort from the very

this pitiless precision the object of their secret desires or their unconscious aspirations.
There are souls still half-religious, but tainted by the deadly contagion of modern rational-
ism, who think that all that lessens the share of dogma and increases that of practical activity
in the Church makes her truer to her vocation, and more conformable to her Master’s
design. It is often the noble error of ardent and generous hearts touched profoundly by
the sufferings and the injustice of society, indignant at the indifference, I had almost said
the passive complicity of the Church, who long to see her fulfil her sacred mission, and
who lose sight of the fact that without these dogmas, in which they say she is selfishly
absorbed, she would have neither authority, nor strength, nor means of action, nor motive
power. In our day, when it is so difficult to maintain resolutely our testimony in honor of
Christian supernaturalism and of Jesus Christ, the miracle of miracles, nothing is so dan-
gerous as the coalition of very practical rationalism and imprudent charity. Therefore
one cannot profess enough gratitude for the inflexible champions of principles, who, while
being the first to preach with incomparable ardor the social crusade of the Churcj, have
been careful to connect this crusade closely with the profession of objective, dogmatic,
orthodox Christianity. They have not onl^ cleansed the Church from a reproach ; they
nave offered to the world the only efficacious Instrument of Balvatlon. What particular

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organization of society ” ; and the State being ordained for
the good of all, the rich and poor, it should “ take special
interest in the welfare of its most numerous class of citizens,
the workingmen.” The State should see that “ the working-
men receive a proper share of all the wealth that they
procure for society ; that they be enabled to live with the
least possible amount of privation and suffering; that,
in fine, they be not always familiar with misery.” The
authority of the State comes from God, and it should be
exercised for all the children of God. The bodily interests of
the workingmen demand that the State “ protect them from
those speculators who see in them so many machines, and
abuse their persons to the utmost for the sake of mere
cupidity.” The care of female and youthful operatives is
especially incumbent on the State; “no child should be
allowed to labor, until it is sufficiently developed in all its
physical, intellectual, and moral forces ; for otherwise, like
a tender plant, it will wither.” Touching the question of
wages, His Holiness does not agree with those economists
who hold that once that an employer has paid the precise
wages demanded by the contract, his obligations are satis-
fied ; and who contend that justice is offended, only when
the employer retains wages that are due, or when the em-
ployed do not fulfil their engagements. The Pontiff holds
that these reasoners ignore a very serious side of the ques-
tion ; he insists that labor is at once personal and necessary ;
“it is personal, because it is the property of him who exerts

value would men ever attach to the purely natural, human, and terrestial action of a great
corporate body? Without a divine mandate, without the help of her Master, without the
Gospel to awaken consciences, without the Sacraments to nourish souls, what could the
Church be, do, even hope for. in social matters ? Social Christianity will either be Chris-
tian in the full serose of t he word, or it will not exist. That is what Manning set forth, with
incomparable strength and clearness, not only in all he said and wrote on Social Catholi-
cism in the last years of his life, but by his whole career. He believed he ought to become
a Catholic, because he did uot believe he could otherwise remain a Christian ; in virtue of
the same need, he was a Catholic upholding authority and centralization : finally be was
the initiator of Social Christianity or Catholicism through his very fidelity to doctrinal
Catholicism. All this development is alike connected and self -complete. It is one of the
greatest honors to the memory of Manning to have been the first representative— -at least
in his country— of the beneficent doctrine which the Social Encyclicals of Leo XIIL have
since sanctioned and set forth, and which has the double object of reminding the Church
of the performance of an essential part of her divine vocation, and of offering to our un-
healthy society the remedy of supernatural Christianity.” PressensI ; Cardinal Mann-
ing, in Introduction. Paris, 1806.

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it, and to whom the power of exerting it was given for his
own benefit ; it is necessary , because man has need of the
fruit of his labor, in order that he may live.” If we consider
the matter of labor as personal, the workingman is free to
engage for insufficient wages ; but if we consider labor from
the second point of view, which really is inseparable from
the first, such will not be our conclusion. “ It is the duty
of every man to preserve his existence, and he cannot neglect
that duty without sin. From this duty comes naturally the
right to procure the necessaries for life, things which the
poor man must buy with his wages. Therefore let the em-
ployer and the employee come to what agreement they will,
far above their free consent is the more elevated and older
law of natural justice, which proclaims that wages ought to
be sufficient to secure subsistence for an honest and sober
workingman.” The Pontiff deprecates those societies of
workingmen which obey the commands of unknown leaders,
and which are “ equally hostile to Christianity and to the
welfare of nations ” ; but he lias words only of praise for bene-
ficent societies, labor-unions, etc., which are conducted in the
light of day, and in a Christian manner. Here we take occa-
sion to notice the course pursued by our Pontiff in regard
to a powerful association of workingmen which had recently
been formed in the United States and Canada. Justin McCar-
thy thus comments on this subject : “ Men will always find
some allurement in the mysterious, and the Knights of Labor
at first put on certain of the forms and fashions of the secret
society, and of the Masonic Lodge. This, however, was
afterward altered by the American order, in deference mainly
to the objections of the Irish Catholics, who counted for

much in the ranks of the Knights of Labor In Canada,

however, the condition of things was not quite the same ; and
the archbishop of Quebec, upheld indeed by all the Canad-
ian bishops, condemned the association because of its mys-
tery and its secrecy and its possibly dangerous tendencies.
The archbishop appealed to Rome, and obtained from Rome
an expression of disapproval as regarded the form and the
rules of the Canadian association, which, be it observed, had
not undergone the revision applied to the association in the

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United States. On the other hand, the archbishops and
bishops of the United States sent to the Pope a clear and
very interesting memorial, drawn up by Cardinal Gibbons,
archbishop of Baltimore. The order of the Knights of
Labor in the United States numbered nearly three-quarters
of a million of men. Cardinal Gibbons explained that a
council of archbishops and bishops had examined the rules
of the association, and that only two out of twelve of the
bishops were in favor of its condemnation. No oath was
exacted by the society, Cardinal Gibbons pointed out ; no
obligation of secrecy was imposed ; no blind obedience to
the chiefs of the order was exacted from its members.
There was no indication of hostility toward civil authority
or the Church. Cardinal Gibbons went, at some length,
into the subject of the grievances against which the associa-
tion protested, and against which, as he explained, the associa-
tion only claimed a legal remedy. . . .No one, he insisted,
eould deny the existence of the evil, and the necessity of a
remedy. But then came the question, whether the methods
employed by the Knights of Labor were lawful in themselves ?
On this point the cardinal was very distinct. To obtain
any public object, he said, the association and organization
of multitudes interested in a reform must be the most effec-
tive means to the end — a means at once natural and just.
Such a method he declared to be especially in conformity
with the genius of the American Republic, and of its essen-
tially popular social state ; and, indeed, almost the only
means of commanding public attention, and of giving power
to the most legitimate resistance, and weight to the most
reasonable demand. Cardinal Gibbons submitted that the
strikes, in which, undoubtedly and unhappily, acts of vio-
lence sometimeS'Occurred, were by no means the invention of
the Knights of Labor, but were the rough-and-ready methods
by which, in every country, and in all times, the employed
protest against injustice on the part of the employers. The
rules and the leaders of the Knights of Labor endeavored, as
far as possible, to discourage violence, and to keep the whole
movement within the limits of good order and lawful action.
Cardinal Gibbons admitted that amongst the Knights of

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labor, as in every movement where workingmen are grouped
in thousands and hundreds of thousands, there must be
wild, or even criminal men, who commit violence, and urge
their fellows to the same course. But he protested earnestly
against the tendency to attribute those evils to the organiza-
tion itself. ... A condemnation of their movement from
Rome would be regarded as unjust, and would perhaps not
be accepted. Cardinal Gibbons admitted that the condition
of things might be different in Canada, especially in Lower
Canada, where the population might be said to be altogether
Catholic. He did not fail to point out, also, that the
Canadian bishops had criticised the constitution of the
Knights of Labor, before the recent modifications which the
interest of Mr. Powderley had been able to introduce into
the rules of the American order. . . . The Pope referred the
whole question to one of the Sacred Congregations of Rome.
The Sacred Congregation does not seem to have quite entered
into the spirit of Cardinal Gibbons’ recommendations. The
Congregation abstained from condemning the movement of
the Knights of Labor, but only extended to it a certain
conditional toleration. It is not unreasonable to suppose
that Leo XIIL was, for himself, much more sympathetic
with the purposes of the labor organization all over the
world. He had more than one opportunity of expressing
his sentiments in person. Several pilgrimages of French
workingmen — one of them organized and introduced by the
Count de Mun — waited on him, during the time of his
sacerdotal jubilee. One of these pilgrimages contained
nearly two thousand members ; another was much larger
still. To all of these deputations the Pope spoke with
sympathy, with encouragement, and with affection. He
warned them against the danger of expecting too much ; he
told them that the solution of the whole question would be
impossible, except on a basis of mutual charity, of morality,
and of religion. But he recognized and accepted their
movement ; he welcomed them for such as they were — the
delegates of a great trade-union organization. In the lan-
guage of diplomacy, he 4 recongized their existence,’ and he
made it impossible for anyone, thereafter, to say that the

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Pope had pronounced against the movement for the organi-
zation of labor. That in itself made one of the great
events of the time ” (1). Returning now to our synopsis of
the Pope’s great Encyclical on labor, we observe that His
Holiness especially commended the zeal manifested by his
wealthier children throughout the world for a betterment of
the condition of the working classes, chiefly by efforts to im-
prove the relations between employers and the employed, and
by measures calculated to make the workingmen more exact
in the performance of their religious duties— a course which
infallibly leads to harmony. He also praises the numerous
Catholic Congresses which have been held so frequently in
our day, serving as means for a profitable interchange of
ideas, and for the arrangement of definite programmes of
united Catholic action. He praises perhaps more than any-
thing else the endeavors to establish something like the
mediaeval guilds ; and he would have the State protect these
associations, without any attempt at interference with their
action. These Corporations, which have been the object of
so many dreams of a possibly happy future for the modern
workingman (2), should be so organized, says the Pope, that
“ they may obtain for the laborer, as far as possible, an in-
crease of all the goods of body, soul, and fortune.” The
first Christians, remarks His Holiness, were despised by the
Pagans, because of the poverty which afflicted the majority
of them ; but wise and charitable conduct finally silenced
sarcasm, and opened the way of triumph for Christian truth.
So it ought to be with the social question of to-day, if taken
in haud by Catholics throughout the world. Let all the
Catholic workingmen unite with a will, and let them act
according to Catholic principles ; then there will be no
longer a Labor Question. “ Let the force of prejudice and of
passion be what it will, sooner or later the public good must
turn toward those workingmen who are seen to be active and
modest, preferring justice to profit, and placing duty above
everything else.” The truly admirable Encyclical terminates
with this call to action : “ Let each one begin the task that

(1) JrsTiN McCarthy : Life of Leo XIIL New York, 1896.

(2) See our remarks on Trades Unions, In the Supplement to our work, this volume, .
In chapter on Salient Features of the Middle Age.

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is incumbent on him, and without delay, lest the disease
now so grave may prove to be incurable. Let governments
use the protecting authority of laws and institutions. Let
the wealthy and employers remember their duties. Let the
workingmen, whose future is involved, seek their interests
by legitimate means ; and since religion alone can destroy
evil in its very root, let the laboring classes remember that
their first ambition must be for a restoration of Christian
morality, without which very little good will be produced
by the means which human prudence regards as efficacious.”

In the minds of non-Catholics of thinking proclivities this
Encyclical produced sentiments of mingled astonishment
and admiration. The London Times declared that it pre-
sented many observations worthy of universal attention, and
breathed the spirit of Christian charity, and a good-will
which, if it were imitated and shared widely, would nearly
resolve all the industrial questions of the epoch. The same
journal described the Encyclical as clear, logical, and written
with all the knowledge of a statesman. The Tory St. James's
Gazette thanked the Pope for the courageous words in which
he had enforced the necessity of keeping the multitudes
within the limits of duty. It asked the question, How many
of our politicians who have votes to keep or to win, would
have ventured to express such* a sentiment in a form so in-
trepid? But the St. James 8 Gazette carefully noted that it
would be a serious injustice to the Pope if his Encyclical
were to be treated as a declaration in favor of the capitalists.
Every paragraph, said the Gazette , breathed a love for the
working people, and many passages of it were inflamed with
an eloquent anger against the inhuman abuses which too '
often made their way into industries and commerce. The
High Church Guardian spoke in the warmest terms of the
tone and purpose of the Encyclical, and said that its effects,
could not fail to be important, since in all questions which
concern labor, the Catholic Church put itself readily on the
side of the working population. The Pope’s Encyclical had
done this in a wise and moderate spirit, and with the con-
stant care to distinguish legitimate claims from those which
are extravagant, and are set up in the pretended interest of

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the working-people. The Pope, added the Guardian , spoke
as a prudent friend, not as a blind and impassioned advocate.
The effects of the Encyclical, the Guardian predicted, would
be of immense importance in the development of the social
question, and it would be so also without doubt for the future
of the Catholic Church. The Anglican incumbent of Man-
chester declared at a public meeting that the Encyclical
revealed a spirit very vast, a great depth of knowledge, and
a foresight most sagacious. The Pope, according to this
Protestant dignitary, had put his finger on the sore part of
the social system, and his word must be heeded or otherwise
the world would have to expiate its neglect , by terrible
calamities. The principal organ of German Socialism, the
Vorivcerts, was apparently thunderstruck ; for it exclaimed :

“ In the plenitude of his power, the Pope has stolen a march
on the princes and governments of all the civilized States,
and has solved the social question. Yes, undoubtedly he
has solved the social quest^n, so far as any existing power
-can solve it.” The ultra-liberal Breslauer Zeitung said :

We praise the attitude of the Pope. His Encyclical is the
teaching of a wTise and generous man, who has carefully
studied the economic and social situation of these days.”

In France, the judgments emitted by Maurice Barres, a
famous Socialist deputy ; by the Socialist economist, Leroy-
Beaulieu, a member of the Institute ; by Emile Ollivier, an
ex-Minister of the Second Empire ; are worthy of being noted
at some length. Barres said : “ In discussing the social

question, the Pope recognizes the right of the weak. Give us
^ few more years for the disappearance of mistrust, and

democracy will no longer discern an enemy in a priest

Will Leo XIII. be content with having disarmed hatred ?
Will he not try to restore to the Papacy the power that it
had in the Middle Age ? We may well suppose that such is
his ambition ; that he intends St. Peter to direct the social
reorganization which all demand. Wonderful audacity!
Unforeseen metamorphosis ! To reconcile the Church and
modern society by thrusting them together into the same ,
unknown ! To chauge with one breath the mental attitude of
many millions of believers, at least in their views of the old

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social forms of Europe ! I admire, and I am astonished.
The more I feel my inability to conceive all the possibil-
ities of the new policy, the more do I feel a respectful
curiosity in regard to that illustrious old man who, as they
say, is about to undertake it.” Leroy-Beaulieu was so
impressed by the Papal pronouncement, that he wrote an
apposite book on The Papacy , Socialism , and Democracy r
which was entirely devoted to a respectful criticism of what
he reluctantly admired. He began bis work with the follow-
ing reflections : “ What is the Pope troubling himself about

to-day ? How does the social question concern the Church
and the priests ? Such a question might be put by an old
man} and he would talk according to the French tradition of
the last century. The nineteenth century was — we may now
speak of it as having been — congratulating itself for having
deprived the Church of all connection with the things of
this world. It had thought that religion, having been
made for things of heaven, should have no connection with
those of earth. Liberalism, professing all respect for re-
ligious liberty, had carefully shut up the clergy in their
churches, seminaries, and convents. The nineteenth century
had acted like those mayors and sub-prefects who, in the
name of the law, ordered Christ not to show Himself in the
street. The cross was to be seen only in the solitude of the
cemeteries, or on the tombs of the dead, or on the tops of
church-towers, up there in the air, far from the gaze of the
living. Well, all this was a mere illusion. The Church
could not remain very long, without taking some interest in
those who lived and acted around her. Her priests could
not remain content with chanting psalms in the immobility
of their choirs, with intoning the De profundis at the bier of
the dead, with teaching the Catechism to distracted children,
or with listening to the monotonous avowals of the devout

of every age in the silent twilight of the confessional

And now behold ! That old mother, treated like a dotard by
so many of her irreverent sons, has begun to talk to men
about things which interest and divide them most. Just as
though we were living in the days of Gregory VII. or of
Sixtus V., the Pope must have his word on human affairs ;

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and the world shows no irritability, it does not seem to be
surprised. Here is a sign of the times that are coming. It
seems that we are beholding one of the great actors in history
returning to the stage. On that old theatre from which some
people believed it for ever banished, the Papacy beholds a
new personage of its own order, indeed, but very different
from those whom during a thousand years the world has
seen. The Papacy shows that it has the spirit of its age,
and, without lingering over useless dissertations, it goes
straight to the democracy, and of what does it speak ? Of
that which comes closest to the heart of the people — the
social question.” Emile Ollivier, whose judgments on Leo
XIII. are not always accurate, has naught but praise for the
Rerum novarum. “ Here Leo XIII. surpasses himself ; he
has never been so much the Pope of enlightenment and of
harmonious serenity. These pages are a wonder of elevation,
of justice, of elegant and strong language, of delicate and

firm handling of contradictory ideas and interests In

all the theses of this Encyclical we meet an incomparable
circumspection, an imperturbable equilibrium, because of
which the fundamental question of the intervention of public
authority is solved, without any injury to any other principle
which is equally fundamental. Thus Leo XIII. is favorable
to the poor man, but he is no foe to the rich man ; he does
not hurl against the latter any paraphrases of the text : ‘ Woe
to the rich ! ’ He speaks severely of the too evident hardness
of heart of certain rich men ; but instead of maltreating them,
he implores them, and he tries to convince them. To this
end, he is not satisfied with leaving them to the judgment of
God ; he shows them the perils that menace them, and he
does not exaggerate these dangers, for every observer knows
that the social conflict, excited wherever employers are
4 intelligent concerning the poor and the indigent/ is con-
tinually growing more bitter in those centres of ferocious

egotism The politicians themselves, turned temporarily

from their rivalries, have been impressed by this language
of a sage and an apostle, language which is beautiful with
the beauty that comes from on high ; and they have admired
it. Truly, said these gentlemen, the venerable man has

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uttered very significant words ; he understands the drift of
the times, and he marches with it ; hitherto the Church has
been in the tents of the rich, but now she caters to the poor ;
Leo is an able tactician. Leo XIII. does not merit this
species of eulogy in which irony is mingled with distrust.
Had the framers of this eulogy understood the policy of the
Church, they would have abstained from it. The Church,
depository of many doctrinal treasures, does not exhibit them
all at once, and with equal insistence (?) ; she puts forth more
especially those which meet the intellectual and moral needs
of the present. "When Pelagius contested the divine sover-
eignty, the Pontiffs and the Doctors explained the doctrine of
grace. When the free will of man was attacked by Luther,
Calvin, Baius, and Jansenius, the Pontiffs and Doctors defend-
ed that free will. To-day the object of general preoccupa-
tion is the problem of Poverty and Wealth ; and the Pope
explains the Catholic doctrine on the relations between the
two. Where is the strategy of this explanation? It is not
necessary for the Church to change her domicile, in order
that she may be found with the poor. When was she not
with them ? At what moment were her maternal ears closed
to their cries? The poor have always been her favorite
children. Have the poor ever had such servants as Francis
of Assisi and Vincent de Paul ? What land does not testify to
the inexhaustible fecundity of the Church’s charity? So
much the worse for you, if you have not hitherto perceived
this truth.”

Naturally an immediate consequence of the Encyclical
Rerum novarum was an effort, on the part of Catholics in
every civilized land, to mobilize their social forces in ac-
cordance with the spirit indicated by the Pontiff. In France,
always at the head of every movement involving the destinies
of Catholicism, the systematic opposition of the Republican
government could not prevent the development of such ad-
mirable institutions as the many Catholic Workingmen’s
Circles, the Confraternity of Notre-Dame de l’Usine, the
model co-operative establishments of the Harmels at Val-
des-Bois, etc. In Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the
United States of America, there was manifested an instan-

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taneous desire to meet the paroxysms of an anti-Christian
demagogy with Catholic organizations which would be no
longer purely isolated and individual. In Spain and in
most of the Spanish-American countries, the pre-eminently
Catholic spirit of nearly all their inhabitants had caused
labor-agitations to be unknown, because the^ were without
any reason for being ; but the sentiments of the Rerum
novarum gave in these lands a new impetus to the already
dominant Catholic idea that the workingman and his em-
ployer were but servants of the same Master, and conse-
quently Catholic charity began to consider the possibility
of ameliorating social conditions which were already far
superior to those which Obtained in the “ Anglo-Saxon ” and
the other regions which are of Teutonic or of partially
Teutonic origin. In Celtic and Catholic Belgium, the land
so dear to Leo XIIL, the several Catholic Congresses of
Liege had already drawn the attention of the rest of Chris-
tendom to the schemes of the Socialistic foes of the Christian
name; and the echoes from the trenchant words of the
Pontiff had not died out, ere there arose everywhere in the
original home of Clovis those Maisons des Ouvriers which
were to be powerful centres for the propaganda of a Christian
Socialism. Everywhere in Belgium the Catholics founded
guilds similar to those associations which had been the very
life of the mediaeval Flemings, and which were now to contest
with Pagan Socialism for the empire over the hearts of Flem-
ish workingmen. Throughout the length and breadth of the
kingdom, there were held festivals which were at once
religious and civic — festivals at which tens of thousands of
Catholic workingmen prayed before the renowned shrines
of their motherland, or enjoyed their simple games in the
parks of the first nobles of the country. But it is to the
Pontiff* s own city of Rome that we must turn — to the Rome
that the Vatican could reach, not to the Rome of the Quiri-
nal — if we wish to see, in a pre-eminent degree, the teach-
ings of the Rerum novarum reduced to practice. Of course,
when Leo XIII. mounted the pontifical throne, he found Rome
as ever the model for Christian charity, very nearly such as
his predecessors had made her ; for not even a devastat-

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ing regime such as that of ihe Quirinal could at once oblit-
erate the work of centuries which had its roots in the hearts
and traditions of the real Romans. But it devolved on the
new Pope, even though he was not in fact a Pope-King, to
protect and sustain the many Catholic Schools in the Eternal
City, the hope of future Roman generations, and the many
orphanages and refuges which had made the Rome of the
Popes the most beneficent city in the universe. And the
financial crimes of the “ liberators of Italy ” had entailed new
duties on the Pontiff; thousands of workingmen were in
abject destitution. For the succor of these victims of “ free
Rome,” Leo XIII., through the Circle of St. Peter, established
cheap kitchens throughout the city, furnishing a solid and
appetizing meal for four cents. The same Circle of St. Peter
established Night Refuges which were managed by the
Sisters of Charity, and superintended by the members of the
Circle ; in these asylums, the poor man or woman found a
clean and comfortable bed for two cents. Then there was
the “ Primary, Artistic, and Operative Association of Recip-
rocal Charity,” which, established by Pius IX., received
a splendid development under Leo XIII. This association
is a society of mutual help, numbering about five thousand
members, divided into several sections, all sections having
their delegates in the directing council. Painters, sculptors,,
jewellers, printers, and workers of every kind, are admitted to
membership. In 1888, Pope Leo donated to the Association
a piece of ground for its home, which cost five hundred thou-
sand francs. One of the sections, especially concerned with
workingmen and the smaller employers of labor, has in its
charge the making of allowances to its associates in case of
sickness or want of employment. The funds of this section
are obtained by subscriptions from its members, and by vol-
untary contributions from the public. This section also gives
gratuitously the medicines necessary for its members who are
out of health and are poor. It has created savings banks on a
small scale, which have done much to encourage a spirit of
economy and of foresight among the poorer class. In fact,
the Association forms it centre of economy and of self-help,
around which various similar institutions have recently

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grouped themselves. Among these, the least important
is not the one which grants loans without other security
than the “ honor ” of the borrower ; nor another which builds
comfortable houses for workmen. As for alms-giving prop-
erly so-called, on the part of Leo XIII., it ought to be suf-
ficient to remember that he is a Roman Pontiff ; but never-
theless certain journals of the Quirinal party have dared,
from time to time, to assert that he is avaricious. In 1890,
the Cittadino of Genoa and the Osservatore Romano gave
details which showed that in the previous year His Holiness
had distributed 427,125 francs in private charity. Even the
Sera , a Liberal organ, experienced nausea on reading these
Aspersions on the character of its chief priestly adversary,
and said : “ It is false that the charities of Leo XIII. have
become unfrequent. Were we to enumerate the families
who are continually aided and even supported by the Pope,
we would never finish. And all of his alms are distributed
to the designated beneficiary, even to the last penny ; for the
bureaus charged with this duty are so scrupulously careful,
that it is impossible for any sums to be alienated from their
proper objects.”

Concerning the burning question of wages, the mind of
the Holy See, although never indicated by an apposite and
positive decision as to the details of that question, can be
sufficiently apprehended by him who reads the Encyclical
Rerum novarum ; but in 1891, there appeared a document
which was, if not inspired by the Pontiff, at least tacitly
approved by him, and which served to develop the already-
emitted pontifical judgments on the rights of wage-earners.
When the Congress of Malines was about to be held in 1891,
Cardinal Goossens, the archbishop of the honored city,
anticipating a discussion on certain points of the Rerum no-
varum , submitted three questions to the Holy See. It was
not deemed necessary, or perhaps advisable, to give an
official answer ; but Cardinal Goossens was informed that
the doubts wtmld be submitted to a reliable theologian for
solution. This theologian was the erudite and judicious
Cardinal Zigliara ; and the reader will note that his view’s
in the premises are to be regarded with more than ordinary

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deference, since the Holy See intended them to serve as
guidance for the deliberations of a very important Catholic
Congress. Cardinal Goossens observed that the pontifical
Encyclical contained the following passage : “ Let the em-
ployer and the employee come to what agreement they will,
far above their free consent is the more elevated and older
law of natural justice, which proclaims that wages ought to
be sufficient to secure subsistence for an honest and sober
workingman.” Regarding these words, His Eminence
asked, firstly, whether the “ natural justice ” here mentioned
was to be understood as “commutative justice,” or rather
as “ natural equity ” (1). The reply was : “ Commutative
justice.” In support of his answer, Zigliara called attention
to the fact that the labor of the workman, a free and wage-
deserving labor, differs greatly from a piece of merchandise
that is sold for a determined price ; but that nevertheless
said labor may be regarded as a merchandise, when it is con-
sidered from the point of veiw which makes merchandise an
object of price. Just like a piece of merchandise, therefore,
the work of the laborer is an object of commutative justice.
“ Whenever,” continues Zigliara, “ the workingman has ful-
filled the natural duty of obtaining the immediate object of
his labor, and it is found that the wage does not procure for
him food, lodging, and clothing, then from the very nature
of things, it follows that there has been produced an object-
ive inequality between the labor and the wage — in plain
words, commutative justice has been violated.” Cardinal
Goossens had asked, secondly, whether sin is committedby
the employer who pays wages which suffice for the decent
support of a workingman, but which are utterly insufficient
for the sustenance of his dependent family. To this deli-

(1) For the benefit of the reader who is not conversant with the terminology of Moral
Theology, we note that theologians distinguish three kinds of justice: legal, distribu-
tive, and commutative. The legal turns on the relations of an individual body-corporate,
or the StAte ; it is called legal, because it has for its objects things that a man owes to the
community, because of positive law. Distributive justice turns on the distribution, ac-
cording to the decrees of legitimate authority, of the honors or burdens to which the citi-
zen may be subject. Commutative Justice, which is the species which principally engages
the attention of moralists, is exercised by one citizen toward another, by one private in-
dividual toward another ; and its ordinary manifestation occurs in contracts, and in other
relations of social commerce. It Is also to be noted that a violation of legal Justice is
termed illegal injustice ; a violation of distributive Justice is an exception of persons;
And a violation of commutative is styled simply an injury.

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8TUDIE8 IN CHURCH HISTORY.

cate and heart-touching question, Zigliara replied that in
that case there would be no sin against strict justice, but
that there might be a sin against charity or natural equity ;
and he thus explained his answer : “ His labor is the per-
sonal work of the employee, not that of his family ; said
labor has relation with the workingman’s family only subsid-
iarily and accidentally, inasmuch as the workingman shares
his wages with his wife and children ; just as the fam ilyhas
not contributed to the labor, so justice does not demand that
the family be paid for the labor. But there is a question of
charity in this case ; although one should not rashly decide
as to whether charity is violated in this or that particular
instance.” The third difficulty propounded by Cardinal
Goossens was as to whether an employer sins, when he, with-
out any violence or deceit, gives smaller wages than the
work would merit, and smaller than decent living would re-
quire for the employee, merely because there are many
workingmen who would be glad to labor for starvation
wages ? The reply of Zigliara is : “ Such an employer sins
against commutative justice,” and the reason is clear : “ When
one purchases a thing, it is not allowable, properly speaking,
to give less for it than it is worth, according to common esti-
mation, circumstances of time and place being considered ;
much less is it permissible to give wages which are less than
the labor merits,” excepting, of course, the case in which
the employer is himself making no profit.

In the spring of 1893, three hundred representatives
of the workingmen of Switzerland held a Congress at Bienne ;
more than half of the participants were either Protestants or
infidels, and very many w’ere avowed Socialists. During one-
of the first sessions, Dr. Gaspard Decurtins, a national coun-
sellor, a “ Democratic Ultramontane,” proposed the following
resolution : “ The Catholic Associations of workingmen are

invited to exercise an international propaganda for a reali-
zation of the principles which Leo XIII. enunciated in his
Encyclical on the Labor Question.” The motion was carried
almost unanimously, despite the religious differences of the
members — a convincing proof, remarked the very unclerical
Journal des Debats , that the Swiss workingmen had heard o£

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381

the Encyclical, that they no longer considered the Roman
Church as an instrument of oppression, and that their
immediate aspirations agreed with the social doctrines of
the Pontiff. Writing to Dr. Decurtins on Aug. 6, Lea XIIL
expresses his gratification on having received such a testi-
mony to the effect produced in Switzerland by his words ; and
amid his counsels he seems to foreshadow the future insti-
tution of an international legislation for the workingman.
“ It is strange and very important,” says the Journal des
Debats , “ to read in this short letter an expression of this
pontifical hope. In 1887 M. Decurtins asked the Swiss
Federal Council to propose certain questions on labor to
the various States of Europe, with the hope of arriving at
an understanding concerning them; and Mgr. Jacobini con-
gratulated him. In 1890, the appeal of M. Decurtins was
heard by the German emperor, and Leo XIIL wrote to that
sovereign : ‘ The labor question must be settled according

to all the rules of justice ; the combined action of the powers
would contribute to the desired end.’ In May, 1891, the
lengthy Encyclical on this question appeared ; but it was
silent in regard to an international legislation on the matter.
This silence was remarked ; in certain circles it was thought
that Leo XIIL, deceived by the Congress of Berlin, had
renounced the idea which he had cherished. But this recent
remark to M. Decurtins show's the falsity of that conclusion :
‘ It is evident that the workingmen will never find efficacious
protection in the laws which vary in the different States.
The very moment that in one land goods from various others
are offered for sale, a diversity of labor-conditions assures the
success of one people, and the failure of another.’ Similar
phrases, which one might suppose to have been extracted
from some treatise on economy, abound in the documents
which Leo XIIL has consecrated to the social question.”
And indeed our Pontiff not only declared with precision the
reasons for his desire that an international understanding
concerning labor should be reached, but he applauded every
step toward that end : “We have learned with great satis-

faction that the Congress of Bienne has taken measures for
the meeting of a still more important Congress of Working-

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men, the object of which will be to draw the attention of the
civil authorities to the necessity of equal laws which will pro-
tect the weak, women, and children from excessive toil.” The
Journal des Debats rightly observed that Leo XIII. is not
at all frightened when a great manifestation of workingmen
occurs ; he is much less suspicious of these indications of
vigor, than is the most liberal of modern governments. “ De-
fender of true order and of social harmony,” says the per-
spicacious journal, “ the Pontiff wishes the workingmen to*
organize ; for once organized, they will oppose to the civil
power, not a violent revolt which triumphs by force, and
whose reason is force, but a plain expression of the claims
which can be discussed in the name of justice, once that
they are formulated ” (1).

fl) la the North American Review for April, 1899, there appeared an article by Prince
Iturbide, which must interest the student as showing not only the institution of Mexican
peonage in a very unexpected light (if the student is an average “ Anglo-Saxon ” Ameri-
can), but also the curious fact that, of all the countries of the New World, our neighbor
alone has settled the question between labor and capital to the satisfaction of both. Prob-
ably the reader knows that Mexican peonage Is a kind of bondage for debt; but it is not
generally known that this bondage is sometimes contracted directly, sometimes by volun-
tary inheritance. “ In the former case,” says Prince Iturbide. ‘‘a peon seeking employ-
ment presents himself to the administrator (by which title the manager of a hacienda is
known) and asks for an cnganchc — that is, a retainer, the amount of which varies between
ten and thirty dollars. If the applicant be acceptable, the peon becomes part of the
establishment. His contract obliges him to work for the hacienda until his debt is canceled.
On the other band, his prerogatives are such ag no other laborer in the world enjoys. In
the first place, it is understood that while the peon remains in the employ of the hacienda*
his debt will not be canceled, but, on the contrary, that it will be increased, until, if ever,
his children are pleased to assume it, or death or old age wipes it out. The debt, may not
be sold without his consent, except to a new owner of the hacienda. The peon is free, how-
ever, to change creditors at will. Only a part of his earned wages may be applied each
week to his debt. Each week he receives rations, sufficient for his maintenance and for
his family. Each year he and his family receive an ample supply of clothing. Medical
services are furnished them free of expense, and the surqs of money that they may require
for baptisms, conflimations, marriages, or burials are advanced to them regardless of the
balance that the peon’s account may show against him. Haciendas have schools to which
the peon may— and often must— send his children. He is furnished space und material for
the construction of his hut, and is entitled to the use of ground, which he cultivates for bis
own benefit, with hacienda’s stock, implements, and seed. Finally there are two days in
the year on each of which the peon receives extra wages amounting to several dollars.
And when, through age or accident, the peon is no longer able to work, he becomes a
charge of the hacienda. Prince Iturbide mentions one establishment which in 1887 had
1,600 inhabitants whose indebtedness to the owner amounted to more than $26,000, of
which one peon alone owed $1,500. Several of the peons, however, w*ere free of debt, and
a few of them were even the hacienda’s creditors. The earnings and exi*enses of the
women, who are very industrious, are entered on the accounts of the men of their families.
Sometimes, at the end of a day, a peon is credited with several days’ extra work that has
been done by the women of his family. Prince Iturbide is enthusiastic in his praise of
the system, contrasting it with the labor systems of other lands to the disparagement of the
latter. Of the condition of the laborers, he says : “ There is a numerous class of human
beings who are born not only in poverty, but in debt, and. heirs by natural law to all the

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THE “ INTERNATIONAL ” AND ANARCHISM.

ssa

CHAPTER XYn.

THE “ INTERNATIONAL ” AND ANARCHISM.

The most successful propagator of Socialism in our day
has been the society termed the International, the principal
founders of which were Karl Marx, the son of a Jew who
had been “ converted ” to Protestantism, and Frederick
Engels. It is not true, as many Catholic and other conser-
vative publicists would fain imagine, that the International is
now dead — that its demise was a consequence of the Social-
istic Congress held at The Hague in 1872. In another
Congress of the Brethren convened in Zurich on Aug. 6, 1893,
Liebkneclit, one of their chief luminaries, thus avowed the
still persistent vitality of the dread organization : “ A gen-
eral ought to change tactics according to the movements of
the enemy. We should do likewise. Were we residents of
Russia, we would act as the Nihilists act ; but we have
become convinced that we must employ against the modern
State every one of the means which the State can furnish
us.” In confirmation of this evidence of vitality, Engels
then said : “ I am the first Socialist of Europe. When we
taught the doctrines of ‘ Collectivism * in 1843, they were

misery of the proletariat— to which they would be a prey If the peon system were not there
to solve their problem of life. As it is, from his cradle to his grave the peon will never
lack food, raiment, or shelter. His wife and hfs children will never know the pinch of
hunger. If he has the capacity to rise above his class, the hacienda will afford him the
opportunity to do so. If he goes through life an insolvent debtor, still at the hacienda he
will have an open credit, and not only his needs, but in a measure, his limited appetite for
the superfluous will be satisfied. In a word, be will be above the proletariat, and that
through no charity of his employer ; for all that is done in his interest Is his due. “ The
peon system affords the farmer proportionate advantages. It is less expensive than others
—so much so that in many instances peon labor competes successfully with machinery.
The prerogatives and perquisites that it secures to the field hands could not be replaced br
increased wages of reasonable amounts : hence the owner secures greater satisfaction
among his laborers by this system than he would by others that demand larger pecuniary
disbursements. Then the laborer becomes identified with the hacienda. It is his home,
and he takes a natural interest in Its welfare. “ This solution of the labor question is
due to the clergy of the early Mexican Church , who perhaps did not conceive the peon
system as such, but whose humanitarian efforts In behalf of the Aztec race constituted one-
of the forces of which the system in question is a resultant. It perhaps presents imperfec-
tions, but improvements may be sought in keeping with its principles ; for it is an excellent
formula that has stood long and varied tests, with the result that Mexican haciendas
collect an indigent population into communities that know no want , while they-
furnish the most remunerative safe investment to be found in this hemisphere ”

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pronounced a dangerous Utopia ; but now, after a period of
fifty years, those doctrines are professed by a party which
is found everywhere on earth, and which holds the future
in its hands. Who then will dare to say that the Inter-
national is dead ? You yourselves have proved that it is
more alive now than it ever was ” (1). Although the Inter-
national was founded and is managed by men in close
relations with the powers of Masonry, and although it con-
tinually breathes a spirit of impiety that is truly Masonic ;
nevertheless, the average Internationalist heartily curses the
devolution of 1789, the masterpiece of the Brethren of the
Three Points, as having been of benefit only to the hated
middle classes, and he includes the Masonic Lodges in his
imprecations, since they are really so many intrenchments
lor the security of his capitalistic enemy (2). We must
remember, however, that this antagonism does not imply any
divergence of views and aims between the leaders of the two
sects. “ The International and the various Socialistic organi-
zations,” says Jannet, “ have hitherto been in the hands of
men who were more or less dependent on the supreme direc-
tors of the secret societies, who have always succeeded in
turning the revolutionary ardor of the proletariate against
the Church. The Jacobin element, just as it was during
the Paris Commune, is now more powerful than the purely
Socialistic element. But this policy of equilibrium and
intrigue cannot always dominate the passions which it
unchains ; and the opposition between Freemasonry and the
International, between Jacobinism and Socialism — if we may
represent the diversity of the sects by these names — must
always be real, since it derives from the very nature of things,
from the different social positions of the members. United,
so long as the Christian social edifice is the object of attack,
the different secret societies try to throttle one another,
as soon as they deem their work finished ; and by this pro-
cedure they often undo their work, thus anticipating the
hour of divine justice ” (3). Originally the Internationalists

(1) Bkchaux : Demands of the Workingmen in France , p. 12. Parts, 1894.

(2) The Monde Maqonnique of JanM I860, says that In 1870, the Radical Committee of
Lyons insisted on a declaration, on the part of Its candidates, that they were not Masons.
In 1870, in fact, the International of Lyons “ excommunicated ” all the Masonic Lodges.

(8) Introduction to the Secret Societies of Deschamps, S 7.

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styled themselves Communists ; but even while they bore
that name, their association had already become international.
At the head of their manifesto, issued in 1851, was inscribed
the call, “ Proletaires of every land, unite!” The World’s
Fair held in London in 1862 gave a powerful impetus to the
International ; and on Sept. 28, 1864, the name was officially
adopted and promulgated in a public meeting in St. Martin’s
Hall, at which there were present delegates from every
European country (1). It would have been strange indeed
if Mazzini, the champion conspirator of modern times, had
allowed an international league to be formed without his in-
tervention; hence it was that Wolff, his secretary, presented
to the meeting of 1862 a number of statutes which his master
had^prepared in accordance with the centralizing policy
which had served him so well in the management of his
Young Italy and Young Europe. But Marx was unwilling
to be eclipsed even by the superior talent of the Italian ;
his influence caused the adoption of a set of statutes which
flattered the susceptibilities of the particular circles, while
at the same time they strengthened his directing hand (2).
The supreme authority of the International, according to the
statutes as ratified in the Congress held at Geneva in 1866,
was placed in Congresses, one of which was to be assembled
each year. The time and place for the meeting, and the sub-
jects to be treated, were to be prescribed either by the Congress
or by the General Council, a body corresponding to the Masonic
Grand Orient The seat of this Council was originally in
London ; but in 1873 it was transferred to New York. Each
section was to be free to appoint its correspondents with the
General Council. The General Council was to have the
right of granting or refusing affiliation to any new society or
group, saving a right of appeal to the next Congress. The
General Council was to have the right to suspend, until
the meeting of the next Congress, any section of the order ;
and any group could exclude one of its sections from its
communion, but without depriving it of its internationality.
One would imagine that from the very birth of the In-
ti) Fribourg ; The International Association of Workingmen , p. 6. Paris, 1871.

(2) See the apposite article of Laveleye in the Revue des Deux Maudes, March 15, 1880
and also the Contemporary Socialism by Winterer.

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ternational, its sole ostensible reason for existence having
been the good of the workingmen, none but workingmen
would have been admitted to its membership ; and indeed it
was this proletarian characteristic that caused the essentially
democratic Internationalists of the European rank and file
to detest the Freemasons, among whom the European labor-
ing man seldom or never enters. But if this had been the rule,
Marx himself, a man of independent fortune, would have
been excluded from the house that he had built ; and the
same would have been the lot of a horde of Jacobin bourgeois —
professors, physicians, clerks, military officers, etc. — who had
joined the association of manual laborers, in order to use
them for their own or for the purposes of some other organ,
ization. Therefore it was that the German group of the
order, entirely devoted to Marx, refused to listen to the
demand of the F rench delegates in the Congress of Geneva,
that the International should be closed to all who did not
live by tlie^r own manual labor. All of those whom the Ger-
man decision benefited, Soft-handed Socialists of dubious
sincerity, were Freemasons; and hence it was that despite
tlie repugnance of the least impious among the impious
host, the Brethren of the Three Points became the rulers
of the International. Among the notable votaries of the
Dark Lantern who joined this “ association of workingmen ”
during the first years of its public life, we may mention the
famous and popular historian, Henri Martin; Chaudey, the
collaborator with Proudhon, who fella victim of Bigault, dur-
ing the Commune , Corbon, who had been vice-president of the
Constituent in 1848 ; and strange to say, Jules Simon, who
was certainly far from suspecting that his new comrades
would soon try to burn Paris, and that he, the bitter enemy
of standing armies, would help Thiers to crush those comrades
to earth. Like many others of his party, this naturally well-
meaning man was the victim of the first principles of a
philosophy which starts from man’s absolute independence
of all divine positive law ; and when he finally realized the
necessity for that law, he abandoned the International and
Freemasonry for Christianity.

The religious and social doctrines of the International are

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THE “ INTERNATIONAL ” AND ANARCHISM. 387

public property, since each one of its Congresses published
expositions of those teachings. At the Peace Congress held
in Geneva in 1866, the French member of the General
Council, Eugene Dupont, thus perorated : “ The workingman
is certainly the warmest advocate of perpetual peace ; but
do you think that you will attain it by means such as were
proposed to you yesterday — the creation of a new religion
(that of the God-Reason, suggested by Garibaldi)? Well,
far from creating a new religion, you ought to destroy all
those that now exist. Every religion is a despotism that
has its standing armies — the priests ; and those armies
have inflicted far worse wounds on the people than are ever
received on the field of battle. Those armies have travestied
right ; they have atrophied reason. Do not change a barrack
into a church ; pull them both down.” Among the toasts
which were given at the banquet which followed this Con-
gress, that of the Russian delegate, the enigmatical Bakunine,
prognosticated a glorious future for humanity, when “ true
democracy would be attained, by means of Federalism,
Socialism, and Ariti-Theologism” (1). At the Congress of
Lausanne, held in 1867, a certain Albert Richard advocated
a study of the careers of “ useful men, instead of the immoral
study of the Bible and one Murat endorsed the plea with the.
assertion that “ The Bible is a code of immorality .” At tbisr-
same Congress, notice was given by Aristide Rey, one of
the students who had infamously distinguished themselves*
at the Congress of Liege in 1865, that recently there had
been formed an organization entitled an “ Act as You Please
Society,” the members of which were sworn to insert the
following clause in their, last wills: “ It is my final desire
that I be not buried w ith the rites of any religion whatsoever,,
and I appoint N. . . . to represent me at my funeral, charging;
him to see that my body be not profaned by such ceremon-
ies.” This Congress of Liege deserves more than a passing
notice. It w*as a reunion of more than a thousand students
of the irreligious stamp, who had come from England, France,
Spain, Germany, Russia, and Holland, in order to encourage
the youth of Belgium to oppose religious education. The.

(1) Annals of the Congress of Geneva. Geneva, 1868.

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sessions were appropriately held in the Casino Gretry, a
dance-hall and cafe chantant. In the work of Deschamps
the reader will find copious extracts from the orations with
which the young men were enlightened ; and if he peruses
them attentively, he will find that it was quite natural that
many of the auditors should have afterward become eminent
in the councils of the International, of Freemasonry, of the
Commune, and of the Gambettist administration in France.
We submit a few of the precious morsels. Arnould, the
editor of the Precurseur , the most important among the
Liberal journals of Belgium, said that in the present con-
dition of society, “there were not two institutions, whose
reason for existence was based on justice.” As for the moral
order, said Arnould, “ we have, in spite of ourselves, a Cath-
olic morality, and that is all ” ; how, therefore, could there
be “ any serious and complete education in a society which
is governed by ideas that have come from — goodness knows
where ? ” A certain Fontaine, a lawyer and an editor of
Brussels, took care to remind his hearers that “ although he
had been baptised a Belgian by the Civil Code and the
Catholic clergy, nevertheless, he had no country ; for him,
his country was every land where there was liberty.” Then
he proceeded to demonstrate the object of the education
which his party proposed to make obligatory in Belgium,
“ in the name of freedom of education.” The Socialists in-
sisted, said Fontaine, on “an annihilation of every prejudice
derived from religion or Church, an annihilation which will
produce a denial of a God, and entire freedom for investiga-
tion.” In fine, concluded Fontaine, “^e expect to procure,
by means of the enfranchisement of the workingman and
.of every citizen, the abolition of every authoritative system.”
; Shortly after the explosion of the cerebellum of Fontaine, a
.certain Georges Janson called on the youth of Europe and
/America “ to seek for models in their political lives, among
ithe Dantons, the Saint-Justs, the Camille Desmoulins, and
the Marats.” It should be noted that the Masonic organ,
the Chaine cT Union (1878, p. 147), said that Janson here
expressed the “ present view ” of Freemasonry. After the
ebullition of Janson, a French educationalist named Begnard

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told the assembled students that “ if success had attended
the efforts of the man who is termed Julian the Apostate, tho
fifth century would have seen all the good which has been
accomplished in the nineteenth.’’ A sage named Lafargue
told the boys to remember that “ human affairs are regulated
by no divine intelligence ” ; but that they ought not to forget
that “ Catholicism is the great weapon of the spiritualists
that during the last four centuries men have tried to destroy
it, and that it is, unfortunately for us, as strong now as ever
it was.” A few days after the adjournment of the Congress
of Liege, this same energumen, Lafargue, bidding farewell
to the lads in Brussels, concluded his address with ; u War
on God ! Hatred for God ! In those sentiments all progress
consists ! You must demolish heaven as though it iverc a eeilr
ing of paper ! ” One of the French boys, Germain Casse,,
who afterward made some noise as a deputy, called on his
comrades to vote, as soon as they were able, for “ the abso-
lute withdrawal of the right of teaching from every individual
who represents, in the slightest degree, the religious idea ” ;
and he added : “ When you leave this hall, you belong either
to Paris or to Borne ; you will be either Jesuits or Revolu-
tionists.” In the following year, another crowd of students,,
assembled in Brussels under the auspices of the editors of
the Liberte , applauded the following utterances of a Citizen
Sibrac : “ I see before me a number of women, and I thank
them for their presence. They will not be wanting in our
revolutionary movement. Eve was the first to emit the cry of
revolt against God! ”

In July, 1869, the General Council of the International,
sitting in London, admitted as a section the International
Alliance of the Social Democracy, the programme of which
had been prepared by Bakunine and Becker, and was couched
in these terms : “ The Alliance avows itself atheistic. It
demands the abolition of all worship of God ; the substitu-
tion of science for faith ; and a recognition of human, in the
place of divine justice ” (1). In the memorial addressed to
the Congress of Geneva by the French delegates* on the
occasion of the ratification of the statutes of the Internation-
al Fribourg ; loc. cit ., p. 129.

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al, a memorial which the English and German delegates con-
demned as not sufficiently advanced, we read the following
theory, which is in last analysis a perfect summary of the
teaching of Cousin and of Masonry : “ Labor is an act by
which man manifests his worth, his strength, and his morality.
By labor man dominates nature, acquires new knowledge,
and arrives at a deification of himself if we may use such an
expression (superstitious, in the sense of the memorialists) ;
for the Divinity is not , and cannot bey anything else than an
ideal of the perfection toward which humanity invincibly
tends” If the English and German Internationalists found
this manifesto too tame, they should have been satisfied with
the concluding concession of the French brethren : “ Religion
is one of those manifestations of human conscience which
may be respectable , like so many others, so long as it remains
an individual and thoroughly private matter. We believe that
all religious ideas, and all a priori ideas, can form the sub-
jects of no useful discussion. Let each person think as he
adeems proper on such matters, providing that he does not
introduce his God into the affairs of society” No wonder
that in the grand Masonic reunion which was held in Paris
on April 26, 1871, in order to prepare for the Communistic
explosion of the 29th, one of the chief Communists, Lefran-
^ais, exclaimed : “ When I was received into Lodge No. 133,
my heart was wdtli Masonry ; for I wras assured that the
object of Masonry was identical wdtli that of the Com-
mune ” (1). In regard to the tenets of the International on
the subject of the ownership of land, it is necessary merely
to- state that the Congress of Bale, held in 1869, proclaimed,
firstly, that society “ has the right to abolish individual
ownership of land, and to give the land to the community ” ;
rand secondly, that “ there is a necessity for a collective pro-
prietorship of the soil.” Carteret, a prominent member of
Bakunine’s International Alliance of the Social Democracy,
•was wont to defend this curious proposition: “When an
owner wishes to rent a piece of immovable property, he
shows that he does not need it ; therefore it should be con-
fiscated.” There is no reason for our descanting on the differ-

O) Deschamps ; loc. cit ., Bk. ii., ch. 14, 6.

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THE “ INTERNATIONAL ” AND ANARCHISM. 391

ences which have divided the men of the International into
Collectivists and Communists. This division was merely a
result of personal rivalry ; and both parties aim at a destruc-
tion of the existing order of society, at an abolition of
individual property, and at some kind of an omnipotence of
the State. Again, when there was question of establishing
the Paris Commune of 1871, all the Internationalists —
Marxists, Anarchists, Jacobins, and Mazzinians — forgot their
rivalries ; and now, after some years of another division, all
seem to be reunited in a compact organization.

No account of the International would be complete, did it
not contain some particulars concerning Michael Bakunine,
the famous Pan-Slavist who, together with Herzen, another
Russian, had a principal part in the foundation of the chief
Socialistic organization. Thanks to the investigations of
Rudolph Meyer, a famous German writer whom Bismarck
honored with a particular hatred, and to the judicious re-
flections of the Abbe Winterer, whose Contemporary Social-
ism has shed so much light on a subject which courts dark-
ness, we are able to perceive that both Bakunine and Herzen
were merely Russian agents of Pan-Slavism at the time when
they posed as agitators for the Socialism of the International.
It is certain that Karl Marx and his immediate followers
came in time to regard Bakunine as a Russian agent ; and
there can be no doubt that Herzen wras an apostle of Pan-
Slavism from the very beginning of his connection with
Western Europe. Undoubtedly, Herzen wras a Socialist ;
but, remarks Winterer, Pan-Slavism is also Socialistic.
“The dream of Pan-Slavism is to dominate Europe, and
then the world ; it expects to reign over the ruins of the
present social order, having planted thereon the Russian
social organization. It is not sufficiently well understood
that the basis of this organization is Agrarian Communism.
This constitution of the commune is the foundation of all
the social dreams of Pan-Slavism ; its apostles despise the
proletariate of Western Europe, and they proudly assert
that the Russian communes have prevented their country
from being afflicted by such a proletariate. Alas! they for-
get that Russia suffers from wounds which are no less cruel.”

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Meyer and Winterer agree in terming Bakunine an agent of
the Pan-Slavic party, although they seem to hesitate as to
the direct complicity of the Russian government in his an-
archistic enterprises. Before his arrival in Germany, Baku-
nine had been an officer of artillery in the Russian army.
The year 1848 found him in Bohemia, where he published a
Pan-Slavist manifesto in the name of the Slavic Congress
which was then held in Prague ; whereupon the New Rhen ish
Gazette denounced him as a Russian emissary, and when his
friends demanded proofs of his guilt, the editor told them
“ to apply to George Sand, who had furnished said proofs to
the journal.” Soon after this contretemps , Bakunine was
arrested at Chemnitz, and he was condemned to death by
the governments of Austria and Saxony ; but the Czar Nich-
olas I. demanded his person, and having obtained the extra-
dition, sent him to Siberia, not as a convict, but as a simple
exile under the tutelage of his cousin, Count Murawieff, who
was then governor-general of Russian Asia. After a few
years of merely nominal .restraint, Bakunine was sent “ on a
mission to the Pacific coast of course he embarked for
Japan, then proceeded to America, and in 1861 he appeared
in London as “ one who had dedicated his life to the free-
dom of the Russians, the Poles, ami all the Slavs So he
declared in a manifesto in which he asserted that Nicholas

I. , just before his death, had conceived the idea of declaring
war on Austria, and of inciting the Austrian and Turkish
Slavs to rebellion. Here then we find in 1862 a war of
races preached by the man who, in 1868, was to speak in the
name of the International. At this time the revolutionists
of Western Europe, not contented with the emancipation of
the Russian serfs, tried to induce Herzen and Bakunine to
pronounce against the government of St. Petersburg; but
neither would yield to the pressure. On the contrary, Baku-
nine published a pamphlet in which he called on Alexander

II. to head a Pan-Slavic revolution. To this programme
Bakunine remained faithful to the end of his life ; the fiery
talker of the Peace League and of the International never
ceased to be a Pan-Slavist, although his sentiments were
sometimes veiled. He never would admit, with the Western

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THE “ INTERNATIONAL ” AND ANARCHISM. 393

Socialists, that Russia was reactionary ; when those gentry
would have entered into active politics, he counselled “ com-
plete abstention,” although he was then calling on all the
Slavs of Europe to enter the political arena. In fact, Baku-
nine did not wish the International to become a dominating
power in the West ; he wished to use it as a means of weak-
ening the West through the forces of revolution and anar-
chy, so that Pan-Slavism would find its triumphant march
an easy one. Meyer finds a convincing argument for the Pan-
Slavic apostolate of Bakunine in the fact that the last years
of the agitator’s life were passed in luxury in one of the
most delicious villas in Switzerland. No pension from the
International, no contributions from the workingmen of Eu-
rope and America, could have enabled him to lead this happy
existence. He had no private fortune ; his money must have
come from the Pan-Slavist treasury — a rich one, or from the
government of the czar. Nor can it be urged that Bakunine’s
Pan-Slavic 'mission was incompatible with the Socialism
that he propagated in Spain, Switzerland, and other lands ;
for, as we have already said, this Socialism was in reality
the Agrarian Communism on which the rural communes of
Russia are based. Certainly the czar and his government
were frequently objects of bitter invective on the part of
Bakunine ; but such eloquence could easily have been a trick
of his trade. And how are we to account for the czar’s inter-
ference in order to save Bakunine from a merited Austrian
scaffold? Why did the culprit receive merely a nominal
punishment from the imperial intercessor, and why was he
afforded an easy method of escaping from even that penalty ?
But more recent events show the cabinet of St. Petersburg
in a light that would indicate that much of the guilt of Bak-
unine is to be laid at its door. “ Did not Tchernaieff,” asks
Winterer, “ accomplish a Pan-Slavic mission very similar to
that of Bakunine ? Did not the Revolution applaud this
Russian commander of the Servian army ? Was not Servia
then (and is it not now) liarrassed by conspiracies of a
nature at once Pan-Slavic and revolutionary? Did not
Garibaldi shout for that cause ? Did not Tchernaieff with-
draw at a convenient moment, with all the blessings, or at

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least with the favor of the Czar Alexander? But if it may
be doubted whether Bakunine had any positive relations
with the government of St. Petersburg, it is impossible to
doubt concerning the intimate relations of the agitator with
the Pan-Slavic party of Russia, a party which enjoys all the
favors of the government. Hideous, indeed, are the designs
of this Pan-Slavism ; the lethargic barbarism of the Crescent
is much to be preferred. To corrupt, to lacerate, to enfeeble
Europe by revolution, anarchy, and war ; to hurl the innu-
merable Slavic hordes on a Europe in ruins ; to offer to the
insurgent proletariate of Western Europe the allurement of
Agrarian Communism ; such is Pan-Slavism, the monstrosity
which, in company with the International, now menaces
civilized Europe.” Reiclienbach, in his valuable Socialism
and the Reformation in Germany (Paris, 1878), thus speaks of
BAkunine : “ This agitator played so extraordinary a part,
that one is tempted to agree with the veteran International-
ists who insisted that he was a Russian agent! Certainly
his exile to Siberia was a veritable joke. It is to be hoped
that the phases of his career will be better comprehended,
when there will appear a true history of the Communes of
Paris, Marseilles, Carthagena, etc. Karl Marx would be the
man for this task, just as he would be the man to tell us all
that he ought to know concerning Privy Councillor Ham-
burger, that personage of German nationality and of Jewish
blood who received from Prince Gortschakoff the same con-
fidence that Bismark felt for Bucher.”

The fall of the Commune of Paris was ascribed, in great
measure, to Karl Marx by many of his hitherto docile dis-
ciples ; they insisted that he had been bought by Bismarck
— a foolish charge, since it was the interest of the German
chancellor to prolong the career of an institution that prom-
ised to annihilate the French. However, the dominating
influence of Marx remained unshaken ; and at its Congress
of 1872, held at The Hague, the International voted compli-
ance with his suggestion to transfer the seat of the General
Council to New York. The cosmopolitan character of the
American metropolis, and the all but absolute freedom
Accorded to nearly every conceivable species of organization

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THE “INTERNATIONAL” AND ANARCHISM. 395

fay the great republic, together with the phenomenal prev-
alence of Freemasonry among the Americans, seemed to
form a guarantee for such a development of the Inter-
national, that the destinies of the world would soon be in
its hands. But the General Council had scarcely been
established in its new residence, when the order was afflicted
by a schism which for a while menaced its existence. A
large number of the brethren, principally Belgians and
Spaniards, disgusted with Marx, proclaimed themselves
followers of Bakunine, and called for a Congress at Geneva.
The meeting was held on Sept. 8, 1873, and besides the
Belgian and Spanish sections, those of France, England,
Holland, and Switzerland were well represented, while the
Lasalle wing of the German brethren telegraphed that it
would accept the Genevan decisions. A new international
association, a federation of national sections without any
central direction, was now formed ; annual Congresses were
to be the sole connecting link for the sections, and during
the intervals between those assemblies the sections of each
nationality were to be guided by the Federal Council of
-each country. The secessionists assumed the name of
Anarchists, and their plans, as detailed by the famous
Spanish revolutionist, Py y Margall, in his work entitled
Nationalities , werafaased on the two fundamental dogmas of
absolute atheism and the absolute autonomy of the individ-
ual. On the score of atheism, the palm of wickedness could
not well be accorded to the Bakunists, rather than to the
Marxists ; and each faction vied w ith the other in proclaim-
ing hatred of individual property and of all existing govern-
ments. But while Marx proposed to preserve an omnipo-
tent State, under the form of a General Council composed
•of delegations from every country, the Anarchists desired
to abolish every social tie ; their reformation of society was
to be founded on the autonomy, not only of every commune,
faut also of every corporative group. These first Anarchists,
all partisans of Bakunine, were for some years almost the
•sole representatives of the International in Spain, Belgium,
and the Italian and French Cantons of Switzerland ; but

before his death in 1877, the Russian agitator had lost all

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

his influence. The workingmen chafed under his order
that they should abstain from political matters in their re-
spective countries ; that they should reserve themselves
for the imminent revolutionary outbreak. And they bore
with ill grace the presence of many members of the hated
middle class in their groups. Bakunine had promised that
no bourgeois should contaminate their delicacy by his pres-
ence ; and nevertheless, the effective direction of the organi-
zation was entrusted to the class which they hated with a
hate which they had never felt for the aristocrats. These
two causes of complaint combined to lead the Anarchistic
proletariat to a belief, encouraged by the Marxists, that
Bakunine was employed by certain governments to foster
dissension amoug the workingmen ; and they soon mani-
fested a desire for a reunion of the entire Internationalist
family. The first step toward this reunion was taken at the
Congress of Gotha in 1873, when the two factions of German
Socialism united to form the Social Democratic Party, the
disciples of Lasalle, hitherto allies of Bismarck, having
shaken hands with the Marxists. The final step was taken
in 1877, at the Congress of Ghent, when an “ agreement of
solidarity ” was adopted by the representatives of nearly
all the Socialistic organizations. This “ agreement ” was
afterward accepted by the German Social Democratic Party,
which had ostensibly kept aloof from the International,
on account of the prohibitive German laws. From this
time the International, as the prime association of the
Anarchists, has been a solid organization, united for that
preparation for its millenium, during which, as Kropotkine
said, “ much blood must be shed, but this blood will be only
an incident in the struggle.” In the Congress of Fribourg,
held in 1878, it was declared that Anarchism demands
the “ collective appropriation of social wealth,” and the abo-
lition of the State under all forms (1). The Congress ap-

(1) The admirers of Ibsen are perhaps not all aware that in a letter written to Dr.
Brandes on Jan. 17, 1871, the novelist Rave vent to the following Anarchistic sentiments :
'* Yes, to be sure. It may be a good thing to possess liberty of suffrage, liberty of taxation,
etc., but for whom is it a good thing ? For the citizen ; not for the individual. But there
is no rational necessity why the individual should be a citizen. On the contrary, the
State Is the banishment of individuality. How has Prussia bought her strength as a State ?
By the absorption of th^indivldual in the political and geographical conception. The

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proved theoretical propaganda and insurrection as means for
the actuation of its programme ; but it condemned the use
of universal suffrage as a frequently dangerous weapon. Im-
mediately after this Congress, the attempts on the life of
William I. of Germany were made by Nobiling and Hoedel,
the latter proclaiming himself an Anarchist ; Moncasi tried to
kill Alfonso XIL of Spain ; and Passanante attacked Hum-
bert of Savoy. In 1879, the Anarchists held their Congress
of Chaux-de-Fonds, and their Kropotkine insisted on the
propaganda of ideas “ by means of acts ” ; and in the follow-
ing year Ottero Gonzalez made a second attempt on the life
of Alfonso XII. In the Congress of London in 1881, appeals
to violence were made, and in the ensuing year, the insurrection
of Monceau-les-Mines occurred ; the walls of Marseilles were
covered with incendiary placards ; hidden stores of dynamite
were discovered throughout France ; explosions occurred at
the Bellecour Theatre and at the Custom House of Lyons ; '
and Louise Michel preached the gospel of Anarchy without
hindrance. In 1884, a number of “ comrades,” as the Anar-
chists had begun to style each other, being out of work, held
R public meeting at the Salle Levis, and proclaimed their
right to attack private property, that they might obtain all
that they needed. In 1886, to say nothing of minor outrages,
an Anarchist named Gallo fired into the crowd assembled at
the Bourse in Paris ; at Charleroi workshops and convents
were sacked and burnt ; and in Chicago the Anarchist feast
of May 1 was signalized by the explosion of a bomb which
wounded eighty persons. In 1889, the chief streets of Rome
were filled, on one occasion, with men who either sincerely
or hypocritically declared that they were starving, and then

waiter makes the best soldier. On the other hand look at the Jews— the nobility of
humanity. How have they preserved their Identity in isolation. In poetry, in spite of all
vulgarity ? Thereby that they have had no State to drag along with them. If they had
remained In Palestine, they would long since have perished in their own construction,
like all other nations. Away with the 8tate ! I would like to take a hand in that revolu-
tion. Undermine the idea of the State ; put in its place free-will and spiritual affinity as
the one decisive reason for a union ; that would be the beginning of a freedom that would
be worth something. Changes in the form of government are nothing but fiddling with
degrees— a little more or a little less-fooling altogether. . . . The State has its root In
the age ; it will have its crown, too, in the age. Greater things than it will perish ....
Neither our moral conceptions nor our artistic forms have an eternity before them. How
•much are we really in duty found to hold on to ? Who can afTord me a guarantee that tir
;yonder on Jupiter two and two do uot make five ? ”

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proceeded to demolish windows, and to plunder shops. In
1890 Kropotkine published his Anarchist Morality and his
Indicator , for the purpose of teaching the brethren the
method of preparing high explosives. In 1891, explosions
of dynamite frequently occurred in Charleville and Nantes ;
at Clichy the desperate Ravachol tried to destroy the Com-
missariat of Police, and the houses of many magistrates ; an
Anarchical propaganda was started in the French army. It
was also in 1891 that the literary bureau of the comrades
caused to be printed in London a manifesto purporting to
be a “ Declaration of the Anarchist Soldiers of France,” in
which we read : “ If we remain in this hell, wre remain with

enraged hearts, and tortured by the wearers of filagree who
threaten to shoot us. We must remain ; but our hatred for
authority is invincible, and we yearn for the day when we
may turn our weapons against our tormentors. Remember
how our predecessors, on March 18, 1871 ( on the explosion
of the Commune ), nailed those two generals to the walls !
We also, when we receive the proper order, will turn our
rifles against the lace-bedizzened vultures who now feed on
us.” In 1892, dynamitic * outrages became more frequent.
Several occurred in the palaces and houses of Rome. In
Paris they were effected at the residence of the Princess de
Sagan ; at that of the Councillor Benoit ; in the Boulevard •
Saint-Germain ; at the Lobau barracks ; at the Restaurant
Very ; and at the Commissariate of Police in the Rue Bons
Enfants. In 1893, Vaillant threw a bomb into the Chamber
of Deputies, and many disturbances occurred in the Quartier
Latin ; many explosions took place in Marseilles ; thefts of
dynamite abounded in Berlin, Lyons, Saint-Denis, and Rou-
baix ; Austria experienced many troubles ; in Madrid a bomb
was hurled against Martinez Campos by Pallas, and an
explosion was effected at the theatre Liceo. In 1894, Bar-
cellona witnessed an attempt on the life of its prefect ; in
front of the House of Parliament in Rome a tin of dynamite
wras exploded ; Paris had her explosions at the Cafe Terminus,
at the Hotel Saint-Jacques, in the suburb of Saint-Martin,
and in front of the shops of the Printemps ; at Lyons the
president of France, Sadi-Carnot, was slain by Caserio ; in

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THE “ INTERNATIONAL ” AND ANARCHISM.

399*

Rome Lega fired two shots at Crispi, then President of the
Council ; and Vienna and London also experienced, though
in a minor degree, the dread fact that the International was
not dead, although it might now be more properly desig-
nated as the Universal Society of Anarchy. During the last
five years, if we except the murder of Canovas y Castillo in
1897, the Anarchists have been apparently satisfied with
their newspaper propaganda (1), probably regarding it as
promising the greatest measure of success for the grand
coup against society, with which many of their publicists
propose to signalize the opening of the twentieth century.
But just as this dissertation is about to go to the press
(Aug., 1899), we read that the deluded wretches have sacked
and gutted the church of St. Joseph in the Rue Saint Maur
in Paris, thrown the Blessed Sacrament to the pavement

(1) Probably the most Influential of the Anarchist organs Is the Internationale ; and a^
a specimen of its style we submit the following passage : “ Side by side with theoretical
propaganda, which is carried on without truce and which we are delighted to applaud, it be-
comes indispensable to proclaim aloud all that science has placed at our disposal. Useless
to say that we understand the urgent, logical necessity of expropriating in all jxmible
way s the middle class, the common object of our i mplaeable hatred. Thus by the side of
theft, murder , and incendiarism, which become naturally our legal means , we shall not
hesitate to place chemistry, whose puissant voice may become absolutely necessary to
guide the social uprising and to make by violent means fall into our hands the wealth of
the enemy , without spilling the blood of our own people. It is necessary to demolish all-
political, military, and religious authority, it is absolutely needful to burn the churches
palaces , convents , barracks , toum-hatls, mayoralties, fortresses, prisons, and Anally to
take possession of everything that up to this day has been able to thrive on human labor
without Joining in it.” The titles of the other principal Anarchist Journals are sufficiently
eloquent. We have the Immrgi ; L'Affamc; La Revolution Socialc ; L'Emeutc ; Le
Droit Anarch ique ; Der Socialist ; Die Zukunft ; Dcr Anarchist ; The Commonweal ;
Liberty ; Freedom ; El Corsario ; Volne Listy; Demoltamo ; V Eguaglianza Soeiale.
In addition to the newspapers there are manifestoes printed secretly. These are inserted'
within the folds of an unsuspected paper, andare thus expedited to the members. Next come
the novel-writers, orators, aud poets of the party. Their elucubrations generally appear
in Anarchist Reviews, such as Z/en Dehors, La Revue Libertaire, La Socicte Nouvclle,
etc., wherein they insert the best formulas for the manufacture of dynamite, bombs, and
other explosives, where finally thev glorify their great Anarchists, Ravochol, Henry, Vail-
lant, etc., whom they make ” martyrs ” and “ saints.” There is besides a large sale of
almanacs, and of prints representing scenes fitted to awnken either wrath against the
middle class or pity and admiration for some Anarchist. Thus when Ravachol was execut-
ed, many of bis photographs were seen with these lithograped inscriptions : “ Anarchy
is the f uture of humanity, property is rnbltery.”- ** If you want to be happy, hang
your landlord .” There are, finally, Anarehte circulating-libraries, which contain mainly
Anarchic writings, or works non-Anarchlc, but which are thought fitted to produce con-
fuston in the minds and hearts of the readers. Amongst these works the principal are :
Words of An Insurgent and The Conquest of Bread, by Kropotklne; the works of Tolstoi
Dostoiewskt, Tschernichewsky, Ibsen, LethomlnofT. etc. On every volume are printed,,
these words : ” Read and Circulate.” Sodkrini : loc. cit., p. 83.

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.and trampled on it, and made bonfires of the crucifixes and
sacred pictures.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE VAGARIES OF FATHER CURCI, S. J.

When the future demi-god of Young Italy, the quasi-
pantheistic philosopher and semi-rationalistic theologian,
Gioberti, gave to the world his grand but subversive Moral
and Civil Primacy of the Italians (1), very many of the more
generous among the Catholic clergy of Europe, less clair-
voyant than the foes of the Pope-King, momentarily suc-
cumbed to the specious arguments of him who was then
the most brilliant although the sole dishonest one of the
Neo-Guelphs (2). Even the Jesuits, generally regarded as
animated by phenomenal astuteness, were so far deceived as
to acclaim Gioberti as their friend ; and one of their Society,
the Father Curci who was soon to become famous as the
most pronounced of all the adversaries of the Sub-Alpine
enthusiast, published an edition of the Primacy in the
pontifical Duchy of Benevento (3). But two years had
scarcely passed, when Gioberti, having found it to his inter-
est to repel the charge that he was a “ Jesuitizer,” published
his venemous Prolegomeni , a worthy forerunner of his Modern
Jesuit It was evident that the Society could not be silent
in the face of the accusations which formed the very essence
•of the Prolegomeni — charges which were very different from
those which constitute the arsenal of the ordinary Jesuit-
ophagus, a creature who ought never to be honored with a
reply. No less evident was it that the Society should
entrust to no ordinary champion its defence against alle-
gations proffered by the latest and worthiest apologist of

fl) Brussels, 1843. The future prime-minister of Charles Albert of Sardinia was then
living in the Belgian capital, his liberal opinions having entailed his exile from Piedmont
in 1883.

(2) See our remarks on Gioberti and his works. In Vol. iv., p. 442 ; VoL v., p. 241, 388.

(3) It is interesting to note that Curci, having desired to publish this edition in Naples,
and having applied for authorization to Santangelo, the royal Minister of the Interior,
received the following reply : “ You are still a young man ; but I, a man of greater
experience than yours, find in this Primacy the seeds of the Revolution and of all its
consequences.”

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THE VAGARIES OF FATHER CURCI, S. J. ' 401

tlie Revolution. On the side of Gioberti there was “ the
prestige of science, the halo of patriotism, and the fanatical
devotion of (very many of) the Italians ; if Gioberti were
attacked, but not vanquished, the remedy would be worse
than the evil ” (1). In this emergency, Father Rothaan, the
general of the Society, confided the task to Carlo Curci, one
of the most impassioned natures whom passionate Naples
has ever produced, but whose ecclesiastical reputation had
hitherto been based solely on an extraordinary success in
the pulpit. At this time Curci had never manifested any
talent as a writer ; indeed, not a line from his pen had ever
been printed. But the event proved that Father Rothaan
had discerned a born polemic in his fiery Neapolitan subject.
Two months after he had received the generalitial command,
Curci sent his Facts and Arguments to the printers (2) ; and
in a few weeks Gioberti perforce comprehended that no sane
and candid mind, after a perusal of their refutation, would
attach any value to his cherished Prolegomena But the
consequences of this refutation, the work of a Jesuit, and of
one who was a master in a sphere where he thought that he
reigned alone, penetrated to the very soul of Gioberti ; and
from that moment he devoted an implacable ire and an in-
domitable energy to an annihilation of both Curci and the
Society. The first and principal fruit of his wrath was that
famous work which, with little exaggeration has been styled
infernal — the Modern Jesuit. No production of human pen
was ever so adapted to the purpose of Masonry in Catholic
countries as this diatribe ; and to it alone might be ascribed
those “ popular ” effervescences which forced all the govern-
ments of the peninsula to again expel the Jesuits from their
dominions, even before the days of 1 848. When this natu-
ral manifestation of modern Liberalism occurred in Naples,
Curci was one of the 146 Jesuits of that kingdom who took
the road of exile. Malta became his first abiding place, and

(1) Kannengieskr : The Advemarles of the Temporal Power and the Triple Alli-
ance, p. 254. Paris, 1893.

(2) In order to obtain the funds for the publication of his book, Curci asked for the loan
of 500 ducats from a friend. The favor was granted ; but when hauding the money, the
Mecaetms remarked that it would be better to give a hundred to some rascal who would
«ngage to administer a good beating to Gioberti. By some means this heedless observa-
tion reached the ears of Gioberti ; and the reader may Imagine the use to which he put it.

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there he began a refutation of the Modem Jesuit which he
completed in Paris after ten months of labor. The original
edition of Gioberti’s diatribe (Lausanne) consisted of no less
than five volumes ; to its refutation which he termed a
Divinazione , because he proposed to conjecture (divinare)
the real object of Gioberti’s enterprise, Curci devoted
two volumes, showing that the Piedmontese had really
attacked the Catholic Church when he assailed the So-
ciety which he foolishly presented as a personification of
the Church as she had been illustrated by the Council of
Trent. “ The thesis of Curci was incontestable,” observes
Kannengieser ; “ the duel between Curci and Gioberti was
really a duel between Catholic doctrine and Rationalist
philosophy, involving all that derives from the one and the
other; Curci had divinato correctly.” Gioberti and Curci
never met in this world (1) ; and three years after the
commencement of their controversy, a fatal stroke of apo-
plexy carried off the former in the midst of his political and
literary glory, leaving us to consider whether he would have
ultimately acted as the latter was fortunately destined to act,
after many years of a similar estrangement from the centre
of Catholic authority. When the defeat of the revolutionary
forces of 1848-’49 enabled the Jesuits to return to Italy, the
author of the Facts and Arguments besought his superiors
for permission to found a “ Review ” of the first class, the
special mission of which would be the defence of the right
of the Roman Pontiff to his temporal dominion in the States
of the Church. Accordingly, the year 1850 saw the beginn-
ing of the Civilta Cattolica, which was the first of all the
Jesuit “ Reviews,” and which, published originally in Naples,
was soon transferred to Rome, and has ever easily held the
first place among the Catholic periodicals of the world.

(1) On one occasion, and shortly after the appearance of the Divinazione , the
adversaries barely escaped a meeting which would certainly have been Interesting.
During the exile of Curci In Parts, he often visited Mgr. Fornari, the papal nuncio to
France ; and one day, as be entered the courtyard he passed the sumptuous carriage of
some member of the diplomatic body who had evidently Just left the salon of the prelate.
The Jesuit and the diplomat exchanged a fixed but an unrecognizing glance ; and when
the former entered the nuncio's apartment. His Excellency asked : “ Did you notice the
beautiful equipage which Just left the palace?” Curci replied Certainly ; that of a
colleague, probably ? ” And Fornari smilingly said : “ It was the carriage of the Minister-
Plenipoteutiary of His Sardinian Majesty— the carriage of the Abbate Gioberti.”

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THE VAGARIES OF FATHER CURCI, S. J. 403

Encouraged by the success of their Italian brother, the Jes-
uits of France soon founded their Etudes, those of England
their Month , and even those of Germany ventured to estab-
lish their Stimmen aus Maria Loach. All of these organs
of the Society soon demonstrated that the older period-
icals of the Catholic world could advance no stronger claims
to the gratitude and support of the faithful children of
Christ’s Vicar on earth; but none of them ever attained
to the scientific and literary consequence, with which our
fiery but judicially-minded Neapolitan endowed the creature
of his own prolific brain, the Civiltd Cattolica. During his
twenty-four years of journalistic combat against the united
forces of the cosmopolitan Revolution and oftMasonic impiety,
Curci was true to the motto which he had chosen for his
periodica], “ Benin# populus, cujus dominus Den# ejiis .” And
when, in 1870, the Savoyard usurper feigned to consecrate
the crime of the Porta Pia by a pretended vote of the Roman
people, it was Curci who initiated the immense petition
which was destined to manifest the true sentiments of the
veritable Quirites ; it was Curci who founded a new journal
for the purpose of seconding the Catholic and truly patriotic
efforts of the Civilta Cattolica ; and it was Curci who was
the animating force of the many associations of faithful
Christians who endeavored to impede the dedication of the
Eternal City to the powers of hell. Such was the picture
presented by the great Jesuit polemic until 1874, when he
suddenly changed his cry, “ Restore Rome to its Pope-King,”
to an affectation of the pious avowal, “We must bow to the
will of God.”

Strange to say, for the proclamation of his change of views:
Curci seized the occasion of the publication of the first two-
volumes of his Exegetic and Moral Lessons , a collection of
certain instructions which he had already delivered from
the pulpit, and which naturally afforded few, if any,
opportunities for an invocation of the blessing of God on
“ United Italy.” It was the preface, however, which served
to warn the Catholic world that it erred egregiously, when
it regarded the destruction of the Temporal Power as an
injury to the Church. Affecting to penetrate the secret

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

designs of the Most High, the recreant said : “ God gave a
great proof of His mercy to the Church when He deprived
her of this temporal domain, and thus took from her the
possibility of making a bad use of it. . . . God permitted this
spoliation in order to sanctify His Church, and it is toward
this sanctification that the efforts of the despoiled ought
to be directed. ... It is incomprehensible how there can be
so much lamentation at the moment when we ought to be
thanking God for His mercy ; and least of all do I under-
stand the efforts (put forth by the Holy See) to promote
a confidence in an ultimate return to that past which has
l>een destroyed by the permission of God We must aban-

don all illusion, and bow to the will of God. . . .The pres-
ent situation being merely a consequence of the past, we
should recognize the goodness of God in His accomplish-
ment of these changes in the external conditions of His
Church, and because of His having forced us, in spite of our-
selves, to become detached from the goods of earth.” In the
Modem Dissension which he published in 1877, Curci tells us
that while he was engaged in preparing the last volumes of
his Lessons for the press, he was not so ill-informed con-
cerning outside events, as not to see reason for affliction on
account of the persistent efforts of the Pope to hide the truth
from the Catholic world. Therefore it was, adds Curci, that
he conceived the idea of developing the thoughts then ani-
mating him in a Preface to the third volume. He communi-
cated liis design to “ an eminent prelate” ; but that person-
age advised him, he says, to lay his developed theories at
the feet of the Pontiff before he presented them to the pub-
lic. In accordance with this advice, the self-appointed
counsellor of the Holy See sent to His Holiness, in June,
1875, a Memorial which Pius IX. afterward qualified as “ a
piece of impertinence.” We select the following passages
from this document : “We must admit at once that Italy

will never return to the olden conditions, least of all to the
recognition of the temporal power of the Pope, as it existed
until Sept. 20, 1870. This truth begins to penetrate even
those minds which would prefer to hope to the contrary.”
As for the opinion that the temporal power is necessary for

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THE VAGARIES OF FATHER CTJRCI, 8. J.

405*

the pontifical independence, Curci insisted that “ although
men have tried to make it dogmatically certain, using every
kind of fallacy and irrelevancy, it is the real cause of all the-
present troubles of the Church.” And he asks : “ Why

should Italy be allowed to perish morally, simply because
great wickednesses have contributed to her modern restora-
tion ? ” Nor does the new apologist of the Revolution hesi-
tate to say that “ United Italy has been made partly by Gody
and partly by the permission of God.” Finally the Pontiff is
approached on his weak side, that of his Italian patriotism and
of his hatred of a German presence on Italian soil. If the
Pope does not compromise with his despoilers, renouncing the-
imprescriptible rights of the Holy See, sanctioning sacrilege
and brigandage, closing the sole mouth on earth which can
protest authoritatively against injustice, then Italy, “ enervated
and sapped from within, separated from her natural ally, will
be in danger of falling once more a prey to the Germans. For
Italy will help Germany to crush France, only to be crushed
in her turn by Germany.” Let the Pontiff extend the hand
of friendship to the Savoyard in the Quirinal, proclaiming a
policy which is “reasonable, grand, and useful, and so
necessary for the preservation and prosperity of Italy.” Let
the pontifical ear be closed to the suggestions of “ a press
which calls itself Catholic, while it imposes its system on
imbeciles by manoeuvres the most ignoble, and while it tries to
reduce the wise to silence.” There is but one way of sal-
vation for the Pontiff and for Italy — a hearty and thorough
acceptation, on the part of the once Pope-King, of the
“ glorious ” results of the “ grand ” Italian Revolution. If
the Holy See continues in its obstinacy, then, predicts Curci,
‘‘ the Almighty will use the mistakes of the good and the in-
iquities of the wicked to inflict on the Church along course of
suffering — suffering which will strengthen her by a recourse
to the evangelical principles which now seem to have been
forgotten.” The world was not astonished when it learned
that the author of this mixture of absurdities, sophisms, and
lies, all diametrically opposed to the doctrine and policy
professed by the Holy See, had been expelled from that So-
ciety of Jesus into which he had entered fifty-two years

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

previously. We are dispensed from any obligation of now
refuting the ravings which entailed this catastrophe, since
they are merely manifestations of the revolutionary princi-
ples which engaged so much of our attention. when we treats
ed of the pontificates of Pius VI., Pius VII., Gregory XVL,
and Pius IX. ; but the reader may not object to a succinct no-
tice of the other works with which the quondam champion
of the triple crown illustrated his otherwise inexplicable
ohangeof front.

The Modern Dissension Between the Church and Italy
appeared in December, 1877 ; and the author informed his
readers that his intention had been “ to write a useful, not a
scandalous book.” He congratulated himself on the pre-
sumed fact that all who knew him would not expect a scan-
dalous work from his pen ; they would “ not be deceived by
those journals, in regard to which he was about to adminis-
ter severe justice.” He was entirely “ confident that the
present work would be more beneficial to Italy than any thing
he had ever written ” ; for it would be seen that he had demon-
strated that “all the obstacles, interposed by the Church
between the Italians and a love of the motherland, were rub-
bish contrived by ignoramuses who posed as doctors in
Israel and as paladins of Catholicism.” Then he declared
that the temporal dominion of the Popes was irrevocably
vanished, and that probably the loss was all for the best.
But who was responsible for the miseries which afflicted Italy
because of that everlasting “ Roman question ” which no
man could bury ? All these miseries, according to Curci,
were due, “ not to the new government, which in spite of its
faults might have been made good as easily as it has
been made bad ; the responsibility belonged to the weaklings
and cowards who despoiled themselves of their rights in
favor of the enemies of morality and religion, and neverthe-
less have the audacity to term themselves Catholics.” These
weaklings and cowards are those Italian Catholics who,
following the counsels (not the orders) of the Pontiff, take*
part indeed in municipal affairs, but refuse to recognize the
powers of the Quirinal by any participation in parliamentary
.elections ; and Curci feels nausea when he thinks of “ their

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THE VAGARIES OF FATHER CURCI, S. J. 407

mystical and arrogant inertness, as well as of their torpid
Catholicism.” The sons of these papalini are all “ puny
and almost rickety creatures, while the progeny of those who
have left the pale of the Church is blooming and vigorous.”
As for those who devote their pens to the cause of the Pope-
King, “ that party without a name, they are a handful of
fanatics who unceasingly croak against those who decline to
obey their orders ” ; and they may be styled “ little snakes
disguised as journalists,” whose weapons are “ insipid epi-
grams and every kind of uncouthness,” and who are capable
of descanting fittingly “ only upon triduums and novenas.”
The perverted Curci has no good words for Catholic France,
whatever he may think of Masonic, infidel France ; the
quondam decrier of the German, like his leaders at Monte
Citorio and in the Quirinal, finds gratitude for services
received a bitter thing, and therefore he now flatters the
German, and unblushingly sneers at “ that famous Eldest
Daughter of the Church,” a pitiful victim of her own “ phan-
tasmagorias.” Aiter the publication of the Modern Dissen-
sion, Curci retired to a suburb of Florence for the pursuit of
exegetical study ; but in 1881, he proved that he had by no
means abandoned the political arena, as many of his well-
wishers had fancied. The pamphlet which he now issued was
attractively entitled The Neto Italy and the Old Zealots : but
it was not received by the Italian revolutionary public with the
acclamations which had been given to the Dissension. The
curiosity of the reading masses had been satisfied ; and what
was more conducive to a neglect of the unfrocked religious,
the foes of the Vatican were disgusted with his persistency
in professing the Catholic faith. Nor was this discouraging
indifference lessened when the year 1883 witnessed the ap-
pearance of The Royal Vatican , the Surviving Devouring
Worm of the Catholic Church (1), although the title was
indicative of a feast for the cleric -baiters, and although the
author had dished up for their delectation all the alleged
scandals concerning the papal court which Liberalism had
either concocted or exaggerated. The Rassegna indicated

(1) When an experience of several months had taught the booksellers that the first edi-
tion was in danger of never being exhausted, they announced in their catalogues : “ Price
reduced from six to three lire.”

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

to Curci the estimation in which the Royal Vatican was
held by the Liberal party, when, commenting on the basic
and pet idea of the author, it entitled its article “ Illusions
Regarding a Reconciliation,” and placed among those illu-
sions “ the Curcian theory of a complete distinction between
the royal and the spiritual Vatican.” And the journal add-
ed : “ Let us suppose that Leo XIII. fully resigned himself
to accomplished facts, and that he dreamed no more about a
restoration of the temporal power. Would that fact neces-
sarily entail a reconciliation between the Church and the
State? By no means.” In fact, Curci was then made to
realize the Liberal demand which we have heard Crispi ex-
pressing when he said to King Humbert : “ Our work is still
incomplete ; we must now prevent the Vatican from ruling
the consciences of men.”

After the comparative failure of the Royal Vatican , Curci
published only one incendiary pamphlet, the Scandal of the
Royal Vatican : and then he devoted his remaining days al-
most entirely to the composition of his Memoirs. It was to
the two last ebullitions of Curci that Leo XIII. alluded on
Christmas Eve, 1883, when he said to the assembled cardin-
als : “ To the troubles caused us by external enemies we may
add those which we have suffered from some of our own flock ;
some of whom have wroefully wandered, while others, by
means of insidious artifices and ignoble writings, have played
the part of forgetful and ungrateful sons, endeavoring to
render their Mother, the Church, responsible for the evils
which afflict her so cruelly, instead of ascribing the guilt to
those whose sole object is to outrage and vilify her.” From
the day that Curci was expelled from the Society, he had lived
as a secular priest, of course unbeneficed, but celebrating
the Holy Sacrifice, the small and unfrequent honoraria for
which function, together with some pitiful remuneration for
hack literary work, if we are to credit his assertion, alone
enabled him to exist ; but it is not improbable that he received-
considerable assistance from those whose cause he wras serv-
ing. Be this as it may, until the culmination of his self-
inflicted misfortunes, his expulsion from the Society had not
compromised his good standing as an ecclesiastic ; and the

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THE VAGARIES OF FATHER CURCI, S. J.

409*

friendship of the archbishop of Florence was always an as-
surance that comfort and honor would be at his command,
whenever he chose to return to the right path. But his respect-
able ecclesiastical status was dependent entirely upon the
mercy of the Holy See which he had outraged ; and although
from the beginning of the pontificate of Leo XIII. the leniency
of Pius IX. had been more than imitated in his regard, Curci
was eventually made to feel in liis own person what he had
often taught to others, that pontifical mercy must be guided
by pontifical duty. In the early days of 1884, he learned
that all of his recent works had been condemned publicly by
the Holy See, and in a few months he learned that he was
not only suspended a div inis , but even excommunicated. In a
letter which the Pontiff wrote to the archbishop of Florence,
His Holiness recapitulated for the benefit of the prelate the
entire history of the aberrations of his protegee — aberrations
which “ frightened the Pontiff, because of their fatal influ-
ence on inconsiderate youth.” Having pronounced the sent-
ence in very energetic terms, the Pope concluded : “We re-
ject and condemn all these ill-timed and false ideas, as well
as all this author’s abominable assaults on this Apostolic
See and on our Holy Congregations. . . . However, our charity
impels us to trust that his repentance may atone for all that
his rashness has effected ; and we shall continue to beg God
to enlighten his understanding, and to strengthen his will.”
The archbishop immediately communicated the contents of
this letter to his clergy in an apposite circular, beseeching
all to implore of heaven that “ the diocese of Florence, which
had been made the theatre of so great a scandal, might be-
come the theatre of a much needed reparation.” Curci re-
ceived official information of his excommunication in the be-
ginning of September ; and on the 15th, he sent to the Abbate
Margotti, the intrepid editor of the Unit a Cattolwa whom
he had for years so ferociously assailed, a request for the
publication of the following retractation : “ I have read the
letter which, under date of Aug. 27, the Sovereign Pontiff
addressed to His Lordship, the archbishop of Florence, and
which was transmitted to me on the fifth of this month. By
this letter I have been fully informed that the legitimate

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

authority of the Church has found things worthy of censure
in those three works of mine which have already been placed
on the Index . Therefore I believe that duty calls on me to
make the following declaration, and I request that it be
made public. Impelled by the respect which I profess, and
which I have always professed, for the Catholic Church and
for her visible Head, I reject and condemn everything that
my last writings present in contradiction of the faith, morals,
discipline, and rights of our Holy Church. And this my re-
tractation must be regarded as covering not only all that I
myself perceive to be reprehensible in my works (for I
cheerfully renounce my own judgment in the matter), but
also all that has been condemned by those whom the Holy
Ghost instituted for the government of the Church of God.
I trust that this sincere expression of my sentiments will con-
tribute to a reparation of the scandal which I have given ;
and I hope that in consideration of this my submission, our
Holy Father will deign to receive me once more as the last
of his sons in Jesus Christ ! ” So unreserved a manifesta-
tion of obedience could produce but one effect ; and in a few
days, His Grace of Florence had the happiness of announc-
ing to his diocesans that the Abbate Curci, “ his dearly-
beloved brother, having been duly absolved and rehabilitated,
again offers among us the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.” How-
ever, the edification consequent on this act of proper humility
was of brief duration ; the retractation had scarcely been
welcomed, when the Liberal journals of Europe published a
letter in which Curci protested against “ a too wide inter-
pretation of his words.” He affected to believe that it was
41 his duty to enlighten the reader as to his meaning ” ; it was
to be remembered that he “ reprobated the Royal Vatican ,
not because of its teachings, but because it had been inter-
dicted.” Such was the spirit which animated the “ convert-
ed ” Curci as he wrote two or three more pamphlets, which
excited no interest even among the Liberals, and as he
composed the Memoirs which he intended to be a vindication
•of his inconsistencies.

The Memoirs of Curci, although written after his recon-
ciliation with the Holy See, form, in too many respects, a

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THE VAGARIES OF FATHER CURCI, S. J.

411

kind of summary of all tlie bitter personalities with which
he had illustrated the Dissension and the Royal Vatican —
outrageous attacks which an atmosphere of polemics may
sometimes explain, but which are absurdly out of place in a
work which is composed on the brink of the grave, and when
the world has ceased to give a sign that the existence of the
writer is still remembered. In these Memoirs there is
scarcely any indication of the man of talent, of noble thoughts,
and of literary power ; one perceives only the worst side of
Curci’s character, as it naturally externated itself when he
emancipated himself from the control of the religious spirit
— his too frequently vulgar vanity, his proneness to unworthy
impertinences, and his continual torture of self with morbid
reflections on his fancied injuries. As he looks back on the
career of Pius IX., he seems to regard that Pontiff as merely
an imbecile : “ It was the great fault of Cavour to have

thought that Pius IX. possessed the qualities of a king ; ”
this Pope deserved no monument, and that which now marks
the spot where his remains repose “ was erected by his
creatures, all of whom were created in the philosophical sense
of the term — ex nihilo sui ei subjedi He loves to manifest
his feigned contempt for those whom Pius IX. especially
cherished — Antonelli, “ with his astute finesse Simeoni,
“ who knew nothing about statesmanship ” ; even Curci’s
•own venerable general, Father Beckx, “ a man of weak will,
which age rendered still weaker.” But Victor Emmanuel !
He was “the worthy son of the magnanimous Charles
Albert.” And Cavour ! “ In both politics and religion I

was with Cavour.” Then he sympathized with Minghetti,
“ that grand statesman.” Even Bonghi, who qualified the
Papacy as “ the cancer of Italy,” was hailed by Curci as
“my friend.” The Marquis Massimo d’Azeglio, who de-
tested the Jesuits, although his brother (Taparelli) was one
of their luminaries, was “ that excellent Massimo ” in the
jnind of Curci. Even the blasphemous Leopardi finds grace
in his eyes. But what shall we say of his treatment of his
late brethren of that Society “ which he had always loved,
and still loved with a most sincere affection ”? He tells us
that in his day “ the Boman College had become, in matter

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HI8T0RY.

of studies, a veritable Babel, because of the confusion there'
reigning.” He insists that among the Jesuits there then
prevailed “ many enormous faults which revealed their moral
decadence,” and that those faults subsisted “ either because
the superiors were igornant of them, or did not comprehend
them, or — what was worse — did not have the courage or the
strength to correct them.” The great astronomer, Secchi,
was a fairly good man, according to Curci ; but he thought
more of the stars than of the saints, and he desired, above
all, that his brethren should revere in him “ a science which,
after all, might well have been ignored.” As for Armellini,
if we are to credit Curci, he was a vain man, and knew not
the first principles of exegesis. Another celebrated pro-
fessor is said to have taught Scholasticism, “ because he was
at the ball, and was therefore expected to dance ; but his
highest ambition was to see a crowd of aristocratic women
waiting at his confessional.” We are even asked to believe
that some of the Jesuit professors were ignorant men (1).
Curci is careful, however, to remind us of his own great
merits. Speaking of liis exegetical work, he says that “ since
Dom Calmet, nothing like it has appeared ” ; and he laments
because in the government of the Society he has been ever
“ left in the background.” Here we have his great grievance.
In the Dissension he says : “ During my membership of more
than half a century in the Society, I have always been a
stranger (to its government) ; but since I did not enter it for
the sake of exalted position, ... I resigned myself to pass my
few remaining years as the very refuse of the Society.” No
one can arise from a perusal of the Memoris of Curci without
a firm persuasion that the eloquent Jesuit would never have

(1) We are told by Curci that Father Rozanka, a Pole, was very obtuse, and knew very
little of tbe language (Latin) in which he was expected to lecture. Cure! says that during
an examination in Moral Theology which he underwent during his scholasticate before
this professor, the matter of matrimonial impediments was taken up, and Rozanka pro-
posed this case of conscience : Fit cas u& : Titiu » Ixops ducit uxorem. Quid faciendum t
Of course, the young student replied that the parties should not be troubled, but should
live in the fear of the Lord. Then, says Curci, the professor cried : ** But don’t you per-
ceive, sir; that here there is a question of an invalidating impediment ? ” And when the-
scholastic replied that he never had heard that poverty was an Invalidating impediment
for matrimony, the Pole was non-plussed, until one of the laughing bo-examiners came to-
ids rescue, saying : “ Your Reverence wished to state thatTJtius was Impos : but you used'
the word Inops.” Truly the perspicacity of his readers must have appeared inflnlteslmaK
to Curci.

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THE APOSTASY OF DCELLINGER.

413

-gone astray, had he paid, in 1874, some little attention to the
severe but true judgment which he had pronounced, in 1854,
in the case of “ that grand immoderate spirit,” the author of
the Essay on Indifference in Matters of Religion : “ Lamennais,
like Tertullian, possessed many virtues ; but he was wanting
in the most necessary of all, humility. Alas ! This priest,
once so honored, rebelled against the Church and the Papacy,
and ended in apostasy.” By the mercy of God, Curci never
apostatized ; and when he died in 1891, he had been fully
reconciled with the Church, and had been re-admitted into the
Society of Jesus.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE APOSTASY OF DCELLINGER.

There is a widespread and erroneous impression to the
effect that the unfortunate Doellinger, the founder of the
u Old Catholic ” heresy, was a faithful son of the Church
until the Vatican Council proclaimed the doctrine of the In-
fallibility of the Roman Pontiff. And nevertheless, as early
as 1860, ten years before the promulgation of the dogma
which the “ German science ” of the Bavarian professor re-
fused to accept, he avowed the already consummated' ship-
wreck of his faith to an intimate friend. During a visit to
the Protestant historian, J. B. Boehmer, the conversation
having turned on the literary projects of the provost, his
friend asked : “ Why do you not finish your History of the
Church (1), before you undertake other work? ” And Dcel-
linger replied : “ I cannot finish it. The latter part of it
would not agree with the former ; the conclusion of my His-
tory of the Church would be thoroughly Protestant” (2).
And this was the Doellinger whose correspondence with Raess,
the future bishop of Strassbourg who had founded the Kath-
olik Review in 1825, shows that then the future apostate posed

(1) Doellinger had interrupted his History of the Church when he began his writings
on the period of the Reformation, and he never finished it, contenting himself with pub-
lishingcertain fragments, of which the Paganism and Judaism was the most noteworthy.

(3) Boehmer narrated this fact to the publicist, JOrg. See Kannengleser’s Triple Alliance ,
f>. 89. Paris, 1898.

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as one of the few “ Ultramontanes ” then in Germany.
This was the Dcellinger who in a letter to* Raess in 1826 found
fault with the Tubinger Quartalachrift, a Catholic periodical
which suffered from Jesuitaphobia : “ These good men fear
lest they may say a word in favor of the Jesuits. Is it not
grotesque ? If perchance something complimentary to the
Society drops from their pens, they immediately neutralize
it.” This was the Dcellinger who had bitterly condemned,
in another letter to Raess, what was to be one of the war-cries
of his future “ Old Catholic ” brethren — the marriage of the
clergy. Speaking of an attack on ecclesiastical celibacy which
the Theiner brothers had published, he said : “ Is it not humil-
iating, when we see even priests rebelling against the Church ?*
These Theiners should be beaten with rods. See that the
Katholik makes an example of them.” This was the Dcel-
linger who in 1832, when Lamennais asked him what course
the “ great immoderate spirit ” should pursue in regard to
the papal condemnation, replied : “ Submit” But the Dcel-
linger of those happier days was the intimate friend of such
grand Christian souls as Gcerres, Ringseis, Moehler, and Klee ;
and perhaps it was merely in accordance with his pre-eminent
characteristic of never having a will of his own, that his works
of that period were animated by a thoroughly Catholic spirit.
It was this excessive susceptibility to the impressions of
the moment that ultimately ruined Dcellinger; as Joerg re-
marked, when alluding to the famous discussions between
the Correspondant and the Unlvers , “ After he had received
a letter from Rio, he was all Rio ; and if a letter from Mon-
talembert arrived on the following day, he was all Monta-
lembert. The last correspondent was always right.” Tlii&
lamentable defect, however, worked no great detriment in
the mind of Dcellinger until he fell under the influence of
John (afterward Lord) Acton, now a Professor in the Uni-
versity of Cambridge, who, although a mere boy of seventeen
when he became the nominal pupil of the idol of Munich,,
soon showed that he was the idol’s master and predestined
evil genius (1). Breathing continually the quasi-mephytie

(1) Concerning this dominant Influence of Acton over the mind and destinies of Dcel-
linger, Kannengieser says : “ In 1849 a young Englishman of noble family was entrusted
to the care of Dcellinger for the completion of his scientific and literary education. Lord-

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415-

atmosphere which surrounded Acton no less than it surround-
ed the Jesuit-eating theologist, Huber, and several others
eju8dem furfuris , Doellinger showed, even before the avowal
to Boehmer which we have noted, that his faith had been
weakened. Joerg, who has been styled his foremost disci-
ple, said of him even in 1858 : “ In order to become a heretic,
“Doellinger wants only to be assured of his rear-guard.”

In the autumn of 1860 there appeared a work by Doellin-
ger which bore the title Christianity and the Church , and
was written in a thoroughly Catholic spirit ; not only was
the temporal power of the Pontiff defended, but certain of its
sentiments were intelligible only under the supposition that
the author believed in the still undefined doctrine of Papal
Infallibility. But in April of the following year, he de-
livered in the “ Odeon ” of Munich two discourses which
were gleefully acclaimed by the Liberal press on account of
their disrespectful tone toward the Holy See. As yet, how-
ever, the timidity of Doellinger was greater than his vanity ;
and in order to calm the indignation of the Catholics which
had lieen expressed in no uncertain manner, he pretended
that the Liberal journals had grossly exaggerated some of his

Acton-Dalberg was seventeen years old when he arrived In Munich. He was a boy of
quick Intelligence and very precocious ; and his temperament attested his double origin.
Through his mother he was German, she, nfc Duchess of Dalberg, having married an
English nobleman. After the death of her first husband, the duchess espoused the Whig
minister, Earl Granville. The mere mention of this double marriage indicates the sur-
roundings amid which the new disciple of Doellinger had passed his boyhood. Although
a Catholic because his mother was one, he lived in a Protestant and Liberal atmosphere
which was necessarily an obstacle to his religious development. Full of admiration for*
Gladstone, Russell, etc., he had conceived an Invincible repugnance for Wiseman and the
English converts of the day. He was bitter against the restoration of the English hierarchy,
and like all his intimates, he entertained feelings of horror for the Jesuits. It is evident
therefore, that the young Acton was more of a Protestant than of a Catholic. His mother
perceived this fact ; and in hopes of withdrawing her son from pernicious Influences, she
confided him to the care of the most illustrious scholar in Germany. .She trusted that Doel-
linger, by means of bis knowledge and his faith, would subjugate his English Telemachus.
But wonder of wonders! The contrary happened. The erudite scholar, who knew only
his books, was conquered by the young politician who had a great experience of life.
Lord Acton was Certainly the evil genius of Doellinger ; he obtained an incredible ascen-
dency over his master, and drew him iusensibly into schism. And this was effected be-
cause the young Englishman was endowed with what Doellinger did not possess— character.
In this species of connubium , of Intellectual marriage, if I may so speak, which was
contracted between the master and the beardless pupil, the latter represented the virile
element. Doellinger had no firmness in his disposition ; he continually yielded to trans-
ient influences When Acton entered the household of Doellinger, be became literally

the master of the professor’s soul. Hitherto the French friends of the Bavarian had exer-
cised a happy influence over him ; their very disputes could never have drawn Doel-

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observations, and he made haste to issue, after a labor of
only three months, his Church and the Churches , the Pap-
acy and the Temporal Power . The first part of this, work

was an excellent championship of the Holy See ; but in the
second part, which treated of the pontifical difficulties then
obtaining in the temporal order, while the author modified
many of the views expressed in the “ Odeon,” he so flattered
the Liberal school, that the Historisch-Politische Blcetter
plainly charged him with having capitulated to the enemies
of Rome. In 1863, the Papal Fables of the Middle Age
appeared ; and here for the first time Dcellinger explicitly
attacked the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, relying princi-
pally on the alleged heresy of Pope Honorius (1). In Sep-
tember, 1863, at the first of the Congresses of Munich which
he had organized for the glorification of “ German science ”
even at the expense of Catholic faith, Dcellinger first emitted
his pet idea of reconciliation of the “ three great Churches,
the Roman, the Greek, and the Anglican,” by means of a
suppression of everything that separated them, and by a
maintenance of whatever they all accepted — a scheme which
implied the possibility of an abandonment, on the part of

linger from the right path, for in spite of their dissensions of later days, they all loved the
Church with their entire souls. The fall of Lamennais had only strengthened (heir con-
victions. Montalembert had cried : ‘ The Church is more than a woman; she is a mother/
And the French Catholic correspondents of Dcellinger cherished an inexpressible tender-
ness for that mother, while the Bavarian shared that feeling until the day when Lord
Acton succeeded in giving another direction to his thoughts. This disciple put the profes-
sor in relation with his compatriots— not, however, with men like Wiseman, Newman,
Manning, anr1 others of the young English Catholic school— but with a group of Protestant
Liberals, of whom Gladstone was more or less the soul. Dcellinger became entirely Lord

Acton, in anticipation of the moment when he would become entirely Gladstone

When he lost his old friends, be lost, we may say, his compass ; he was like a ship with-
out a helmsman ; perfidious friends directed the course of the vessel, resolved on casting her
on the rocks. The ship was not wrecked until many years had elapsed. Thanks to the
Impetus of the direction already initiated, thanks also to one or two of blsolden intimates,
the moral vagaries of Dcellinger were not perceived at once : he drifted a long time, ere
he foundered on the shoals of heresy. . . . Perhaps all would have yet been well, if Dcel-
linger had remained faithful to his vocation as a historian; but questions of religious
politics were the order of the day. Young Italy was preparing her war for Independence,
land English diplomacy favored her ambition. Lord Acton took a keen interest in the pol-
tical struggles which his English friendshad instigated ; a decided partisau of Italian unity,
he condemned the temporal power of the Pope. These problems were often discussed by
the master and the pupil ; and Dcplllnger ended by harboring all the antipathies of the
English Liberals, and by encouraging the designs of the Sub-Alpine plotters. The past
lost its attractions for him ; Instead of burying himself in historical documents, he now
devoured Italian pamphlets and the reports of English diplomacy. The effervescence of
the peninsulars consumed him ; he became an Italianissimo .**

(1) For the defence of Pope Honorius, see our Vol. 1., p. 432.

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the Church, of at least some part of her dogmatic teaching.
This step in the path of “ religious progress ” was rewarded
in the following October by the provost’s appointment as a
member of the Royal Bavarian “ Historical Commission,”
and so great was his glee on receiving this gratification of
one of his supreme ambitions, that he wrote to Jcerg : “ Est
mirabile in oculis nostris.” Besides this token of approba-
tion, others had been given to Doellinger by King Max-
imilian IL, whose ideal scheme for religious pacification
was practically a mere subsitution of a kind of Universal
Academy instead of the Church ; in 1860, His Majesty had
conferred on him a decoration which allowed him to appear
at court — a favor which caused him, although he had said
in 1859 that the court was “a mad house,” to now call on
Joerg to rejoice because “ the wind had changed.” Ranke
was delighted with the ebullition of Doellinger at the \ Con-
gress of Munich ; writing to Sybel on Oct. 7, the histori-
ographer of His Prussian Majesty said : “ Doellinger has
defended the rights of science so well, that we may regard him
as being, in a certain sense, one of our friends and allies.”
These rights of science, and let it be understood, particular-
ly of “ German science,” were strenuously vindicated by
Doellinger in the funeral oration for Maximilian II. which
he pronounced before the Academy of Munich on March 30,
1864, insisting that “ Germany is the heart of Europe, and
Bavaria is the heart of Germany ; Munich is the heart of
Bavaria, and the Academy or the University is the heart of
Munich.” In January, 1865, the provost completed a study
on the Question of the Seminary of Spire and the Syllabus ,
and in 1866 a pamphlet on the Council of Trent , both of
which were redolent of a spirit of bitter hatred for the
Papacy, but were retained in the writer’s desk until his
death enabled Reusch, an injudicious friend, to give them to
the public among other effusions of minor importance (1).
In 1867, the Allgemeine Zeitung and the Neue Freie Presse
published a series of venemous anti-papal articles which a
few of the friends of Doellinger refused, contrary to the
general opinion, to regard as his productions. Jcerg said

(1) Minor Writings of Doellinger. Stuttgart, 1890.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HI8T0RY.

at the time that the provost had placed his signature on
them by means of the fulsome eulogies of himself which the
articles contained ; and their appearance in the posthumous
collection published by Keusch is a proof that the unfortu-
nate was really their author. In 1868, he “ corrected ” his
Christianity and the Church , suppressing all the passages of
the first edition which favored the Holy See ; and when the
“ corrected ” version appeared, the reader was left in ignor-
ance concerning the “ corrections.’ * In 1869, when the
Protestant, and Catholic worlds were both indulging in
speculations upon the imminent Council of the Vatican, the
Allgemcine Zeitung published several anonymous articles
which time has shown to have been written by Doellinger,
and which were more injurious to the Papacy than anything
which he had hitherto produced ; and when a friend, taking
for granted that the paroxysms were his, ventured to re-
prove him, the hypocrite replied : “ Your reproaches are
unjust. I am alw ays the same ; I follow' the march of events
attentively and tranquilly. It is true that I do not approve
of everything that is being now done in the name of the
Church ; but can it therefore be said that I sulk? If so,
then certainly St. Bernard and Fenelon wrere sulkers.”
This comparison of himself with the last of the Fathers
and wTitli the gentle dove of Carabray deprives Doellinger of
every claim to be excused on the score of good faith. Well
may Kannengieser say : “ When revolt is accompanied by
frankness, it may have its grandeur ; but wre find it difficult
to pardon the hypocrite wTho lifts his eyes towrard heaven
while he assassinates. Doellinger had the misfortune to
play this part, and the stain is irremovable. For his honor
it is a pity that he did not at least regret these articles.
At a time of violent anger, one may pen pages which he
may afterwrard deplore most sincerely ; but alas ! such a re-
gret did not trouble the heart of the learned historian.
When a friend conjured him to close the mouths of his
accusers by publishing an avow'al of submission to the Holy
See, the provost took advantage of the anonymousness of
the articles, and said that he had nothing to retract; ‘lie
accuses himself who excuses himself,’ he wrote, adding that

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his conscience was tranquil. It was a strange conscience
that prompted him to unite these articles in the volume
which he entitled The Pope and the Council , by Janus."

In the work which Doellinger published under the pen-name
of Janus , he rejected not only the infallibility of the Roman
Pontiff, but also that of (Ecumenical Councils ; according to
the infallible Janus , public opinion, guided of course by
“ German science,” of which Doellinger at least implicitly
claimed to be the incarnation, was to take the place once
occupied by the Popes or by the bishops assembled in
Council. Since the ninth century, there has been no Church ;
we must now try to re-discover her ; when the bishops con-
sidered whether or not they should proclaim the Pope
infallible, they were amusing themselves with child’s play,
for the Papacy itself is illegitimate. Such is a summary of
the teachings of Janus ; but when, a few months after the
appearance of the incendiary lucubration, the same Janus
addressed his Reflections to the bishops who were on the
point of starting for the Vatican Council, he showed that he
was indeed two-faced, for he adopted a tone of evangelical
sweetness, and he begged the prelates to remember the
solemnity of an oath. Nothing, lie said, could exceed the
respect with which lie regarded them ; but this assurance
was eloquently belied when, shortly afterward, he declared
that the French episcopal partisans of the Pope-King were
like “ a lot of old women armed with the squirt of Moliere,.
trying to save a palace in flames.” We have already given
some attention to the course pursued by Doellinger in
reference to the Council of the Vatican (1) ; but there are
other details which will interest the student. When the note
of Prince Hohenlohe, praying the European powers to pre-
vent the meeting of the Council, had failed of success,,
Doellinger, who had inspired that note, did not therefore
regard his cause as desperate. No sooner had the prelates
arrived in the Eternal City, than he began to publish in the
Allgrmeine Zeitung a series of letters on the Council which
purported to come from Rome, but were written by him after
he had studied information furnished to him by his friend

(0 See Vol. v., ch. 17.

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Friedrich and by Count Arnim, who were then really in the
capital of Christendom. One of these letters, that of Jan. 19,
1870, abandoned the affectation of anonymousness which the
others presented, and the author took care to draw the
attention of the_ public to his position as a “ doctor of the
Church — Lehrer der Kirche averring that his conscience
was troubled, because of the imminent ecclesiastical rev-
olution. The numerous endorsements of these letters —
forwarded by Protestants, Freemasons, avowed infidels, and
men bearing the stamp of every school except the Catholic —
caused Schulte, one of the most prominent of the Doellinger-
ites, to hope that the conciliar minority would carry its
point ; but the master told him that they “ could not count
on the bishops,” and that it would be better to convoke a
Council of the anti-infallibilists, in order to show their power.
We have seen the importance of this and similar reunions of
the future heretics; here we would merely remind the
student that the first Doellingerite assembly, convened at
Nuremberg on Aug. 25, 1870, was composed of eleven priests
and two laymen. The chief consequences of this convention
were the pastoral of the German bishops, assembled in
Fulda, warning their flocks concerning the machinations of
the Neo-Protestants ; and a demand of the archbishop of
Munich, addressed to the Faculty of Theology in the
University, calling on its members to announce their defini-
tive position in reference to the dogma of Papal Infallibility.
.Seven of these professors submitted to the Vatican decrees ;
Doellinger refused compliance, continuing to lecture in the
University, and strange to say, the seminarians of Munich
were sufficiently fatuous to frequent his exhibitions (1).
'That His Grace of Munich should have so long allowed this
scandal is a curiosity of episcopal polity. Undoubtedly
the protection of the mad king, Louis IL, prevented the

(1) One day toward tbe end of 1870, one of tbese seminarians happened to find a
portfolio of Doellinger which the professor had mislaid. Impelled by youthful curiosity,
the lad examined tbe contents, and he found among them the proof-sheets of the
Ecclesiastical History which Kurtz, a Protestant, had recently written. Further investi-
gation showed that for some time Doellinger had delivered, verbatim et literatim, the
course of Kurtz to bis own auditors. When tbe rector of the seminary restored tbe
portfolio to Doellinger, he requested the old gentleman to have some respect for tbe
faith of his students ; and justice demands that we record that the hint was taken, at least
to some extent.

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entertainment of any hope that the heretical professor of
Ecclesiastical History would be deprived of his chair in a
State institution ; just at this time the monarch wrote to his
protegee : “ I am glad that I have not been deceived in you.

I have often declared that you are my Bossuet Veritable
rock of the Church, I am proud of you.” But the recalci-
trant was certainly excommunicated ipso facto because of his
obstinately heretical teachings ; and proper ecclesiastical zeal
now demanded that the toleration he still enjoyed should be
abrogated immediately by a public announcement of that ex-
communication. Only when that course had been pursued,
would the seminarians and other Catholic students of the
University be compelled to avoid the lecture-room of Dcel-
linger. Not until January 4, 1871, did His Grace of Munich
demand a retractation from his rebellious diocesan, and then
his letter was answered with a request for a delay of a few
weeks, during which the culprit “might conscientiously
study the grave question on which his future depended.”
The insincerity of this prayer was almost immediately de-
monstrated when, on January 20 and 22, the Allgerneine
Zeitnng published two letters, anonymous indeed, but which
all Germany recognized as Doellingerian, and which, like all
of the other anonymous productions which were universally
ascribed to the professor, the collection given to the world
by Reusch acknowledges as such. These letters heaped out-
rages on the archbishop of Munich, and denounced the
Catholic Church as an institution dangerous for any State.
Eight days after these ebullitions, however, their author
wrote to his ordinary, not anonymously, but as Dr. Dcellin-
ger, begging for another respite, during which he might
“ implore light from the Most High.” And again, almost
immediately, the Allgerneine Zeitung of February 10 present-
• ed to its readers an anonymous lucubration, which is also
accepted by Reusch, and which branded the archbishop as
a forger. Nevertheless, on February 15 the prelate signified
to the hypocrite that a further delay of a month was accord-
ed to him ; and when that term was about to expire, and a
respite of eight additional days was requested, for the purpose
of enabling the heretic “ to examine the many documents.

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which he was receiving from every quarter,” His Grace pater-
nally granted the favor. Meanwhile Lord Acton and other
self-proclaimed good theologians, the real leaders of the
movement which was fondly supposed by many good Prot-
estants to prognosticate the final demise of that Papacy
which had been so frequently killed, were prompting their
scapegoat as he prepared the pronunciamiento which was to
announce to the world the birth of the Bismarckian National
Church of Germany. On March 25, the Allgemeine Zeitung
published Dcellinger’s formal declaration that “ as Christian,
as a theologian, as a historian, and as a citizen, he could not
accept the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Roman Pon-
tiff.” And he exultantly proclaimed : “ Thousands of priests,
and hundreds of thousands of lay persons, think as I think,
and regard the recent conciliar decrees as inadmissable.
Down to this present moment no Catholic has ever told me
that he was convinced of the truth of those doctrines; and
all my friends and acquaintances declare that their exper-
ience is like mine.” Even this manifesto did not induce the
archbishop of Munich to declare the excommunication
of Doellinger ; he simply announced that thereafter the
seminarians of his diocese would not be allowed to attend
the lectures in Ecclesiastical History which were given
in the University of Munich. But on April 17r His Grace
felt that he was compelled to act ; and the faithful were in-
formed that by his own avowals the great Dr. Doellinger
had segregated himself from the Catholic communion. Nat-
urally “ the champion who had endeavored to save the
Church ” was congratulated by all the Protestant, Masonic,
Jewish, and avowedly infidel journals of the world ; the
University of Oxford enrolled him among its Doctors of
Laws (at least a superfluous compliment to the most prom-
inent exponent of “ German science ”) ; the ex-Carmelite •
apostate, Loyson, prophesied that the unfortunate would be
revenged by the terrible punishments which were being
prepared for “ those who had corrupted the Church.”

We have already shown, in our dissertation on the “ Old
Catholics,” the miserable delusion under which Doellinger
labored when he flattered himself that hundreds of thousands

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THE APOSTASY OF DGELLINOER. 423

of Catholics would follow him as he deserted from the
Homan camp ; now we would draw the attention of the
reader to some features of the evolution which the heresi-
arch experienced, after his emancipation from the “ tyranny ”
of the Catholic Church. One of the most salient of these
features, although an apparently necessary accompaniment
of every abandonment of the faith, was his treatment of the
Society of Jesus. We have seen that in his Catholic days
Doellinger was not hostile to the Jesuits ; but after the
catastrophe of his life, the Modern Jesuit of Gioberti would
appear to have become his Fade Mecum . Writing to

Michelis on May 1, 1874, he said : “ I have found that I am
obliged to revise radically all my historical and patriotic
science (after forty-eight years of a professorship of that
science) ; I must again investigate the fundamental results
of my early studies. Would that I had done this twenty
years ago ! ” He prosecuted this so much needed revision ;
and one of its results was a consciousness of a duty to teach
the world, in nearly every one of the academical discourses
with which he regaled his infidel or latitudinarian audiences
in Munich, how little they knew concerning the iniquities of
the sons of Loyola. In 1882, he published, with this object,
his Policy of Louis XIV. ; and in 1886 there appeared his
foolish essay on the noble Mme. de Main tenon under the title
of The Most Influential Woman in the History of France (1).
Here his revised historical and theological attainments im-
pelled him to define the Jesuit conception of moral science
as “ the art of changing mortal or venial sins into indifferent
acts.” This evolution of the famous historian, however, is
less inexplicable than his volte-face in the matter of the Jews.
In the olden times, he had been inexcusably severe toward
the children of Israel ; even his feelings as a Bavarian, com-
miserating the sufferings of the thousands of his country-
men who. were the prey of Jewish usury, could scarcely
justify this passage from a discourse which he once deliv-
ered in the Bavarian Chambers : “ One should have seen the

(1) For a defence of Mme. de Maintenon against tbe aspersions with which her char-
acter and career have been visited by the majority of Protestant, and by many Ignorant
Catholic writers, see our Vol. iv., p. 291, et seqq.

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cold calculation with which the Jew selects his victim, seizes
him slowly but surely, and then sucks his blood without
pity or mercy, and with the imperturbable calm with which
a surgeon dissects a corpse. One should have seen all this
on the spot ; and then he would recall involuntarily the verses
in which the Homan poet depicts Laocoon fighting the serpent
whose folds entwine him and are about to strangle him.
And besides these diabolical manoeuvres, we behold the vam-
pire of the Jewish press spreading its wings. It waves them
in the journals of the morning, of mid-day, and of the even-
ing ; in its issues on Sundays and on holy-days ; in order that
those whom it deceives may not have a moment for reflection,
and in order that, reduced to semi-paralysis, they may not
feel that the proboscis of the Jewish demon is drawing from
their frames the last drops of tlieir life-blood.” But after
Doellinger had separated from the Papacy, he had no hatred
to spare from that with which he pursued Rome and the
Jesuits. He forgot the manner in which his then dearly-
beloved Luther had treated the Israelites when descanting on
The Jews and Their Lies . He ignored the assertion of his col-
league, the Protestant Lagarde, that “ The Jewish Alliance
is, in the field of Semitism, what the Society of Jesus is in
the field of Catholicism ” ; and lie cared not to hear Bceckel,
another Protestant associate, declaiming that “ The Jew-
Jesuits are a thousand times worse tliair the others.” It
was in accordance, therefore, with the anti-Christian predi-
lections of his later years, and not because of any universal
humanitarian proclivities, that in the discourse which Doel-
linger pronounced in 1881 on The Jexcs in Europe , he declared
that “ he was there to love, and not to hate ” ; and that
“ Israel remains the chosen people of God ; for God does not
forget His promises. The Jews are our brothers, who will
be one with us as soon as we learn how, by our faith and
our lives, to excite in them a holy emulation.” But the
most interesting phrase of the Doellingerian evolution was the
apostate’s virtual acceptance of Rationalism. He showed
his unbelief in the historical truth and in the inspiration of
essential parts of the New Testament when, in 1887, he in-
sisted that the story of Simon the Magician, narrated in the

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THE APOSTASY OF DOELLINGER.

42 fr

Acts of the Apostles, is a fable ; and that “ belief in demonism
is an illusion,” being nothing more than “ a gift from Pa-
ganism to Christianity.” He had already implicitly denied
the historical value of the Pentateuch in 1883, when, speaking
of the Founders of Religions , he said : “ The first commence-
ments of religious development are a mystery for us, just as
the primitive history of humanity is a mystery. . . . The his-
tory of all religions proves that it is a very dangerous temp-
tation to believe one’s self divinely inspired, and to imagine
that God has chosen one’s self, among many millions, to be
the instrument of His designs.” In 1887, when treating of
the influence of Greek literature and civilization on the
Western world, he adopted the assertion of Ranke : “ The
Christian religion was born from the antagonism subsisting
between the religious opinions of other peoples,” and then,
concluded that Christianity is simply a mixture of Greek
philosophy, Judaism, and a few poetical fictions. “ It was
from this atmosphere,” said Doellinger, “ that Christianity
emanated.” It is true that in many of the discourses which
the apostate pronounced in the days of his terrible desol-
ation— when he was “ isolated,” as he wrote to the papal
nuncio, Mgr. Ruffo-Scilla, in 1887 — the most palpably
Rationalistic sentiments were often so clothed in a thin dis-
guise of ostensibly orthodox verbiage, that persons of merely
ordinary powders of penetration might have been led to be-
lieve in a survival of Christian convictions in the mind of the
orator. But from the day of his formal segregation from the
Fold of Christ, Rationalistic asseverations fell from the lips
of Doellinger so frequently, that one is led to believe in the
accuracy of the judgment which impelled Gladstone, some
years after the great catastrophe, to term his unfrocked
friend a freethinker. This freethinking propensity, however,
may have resulted merely from a habit which the unfortunate
had consecrated by very many years of indulgence — the
habit of yielding to circumstances, to the dictates of policy,
and to the tyrannous exigencies of human respect

In the year 1857, three years before he avowed to Bcehmer
the shipwreck of his own faith, Doellinger took occasion,
in an article published in the Historisch-Politische Blcetter,.

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to account for the religious aberrations of Baader, one of
his comrades of the School of Munich. The vagary of this
septuagenarian was short-lived, and he died in the com-
munion of the Church ; but after his demise certain foolish
friends thought to procure for him a posthumous reputation
by publishing certain love-letters which the old man had
written to a little soubrette of nineteen. Commenting on
this intrigue, Doellinger said : “This correspondence shows
very clearly that the motives for Baader’s animosity against
the Church were purely external and accidental, and that they

were foreign to his philosophy We need no more than these

letters in order to understand how Baader crossed the line
which separates the serene convictions of one who has arrived
at the zenith of his intellectual development, from the passion-
ate but almost childish desires of an impotent old man.”
If Doellinger ever perused these lines during the long years
of his segregation from the Fold of Christ, he must have
recognized in them his own self-condemnation. Baader had
once said that when an old man descends to illegitimate
amours, he is “ a soul that has fallen from heaven into a
scullery.” So far as we know, the old age of Doellinger
succumbed to no onslaught of carnal passion ; but certainly,
like those of Baader, “the motives for his animosity against
the Church were purely external and accidental,” and
Satanic pride is at least as ignoble as sensuality. No
Catholic wTill pretend to judge as to the sentiments of Doel-
linger’s innermost heart at any moment of the long years
which he spent as an exile from his Father’s house ; still less
will any Catholic abandon the hope that when, on Jan. 9,
1890, a fatal stroke of apoplexy reduced the more than
nonagenarian to an unconsciousness which ended only in
death, a moment of lucidity and of sincerity might possibly
have enabled him to conceive an Act of Contrition, as he
remembered the words which he penned in 1861 in his
Church and Churches: “One thing is certain. Amid the
ruins of everything earthly, one institution alone will ever
■survive, emerging intact from the mass of debris, because
it is indestructible, immortal That institution is the Chair
of St. Peter.”

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CHAPTER XX

LOUIS VEUILLOT. *

“ Place my pen at my side ; put the crucifix, my pride, on
my breast ; lay this volume at my feet ; then close my coffin
in peace. ... I trust in Jesus. Here on earth, I have not
been ashamed of His faith ; and on the last day, when I stand
before His Father, He will not be ashamed of me.”

Such were the words of his funeral sermon, preached by
Veuillot himself in his beautiful book, Here and There ; and
one of his biographers would add no more by way of epi-
taph than the involuntary homage which was rendered to
the great journalist by the adversary who said that Veuillot
never had other objects in view than the Pope and good
grammar. The life of such an editor must necessarily
furnish material for the edification of a Catholic layman ;
and that of Louis Yeuillot will refresh his memory with the
remembrance of some of the most stirring events of our
century. Yeuillot was born at Boynes in the Gatinais, Oc-
tober 11, 1813. “ Once upon a time,” he tells us in Rome

and Loreto , “ there lived, not a king and queen, but a jour-
neyman-cooper, who had nothing in the world but his tools ;
and who, carrying these on his back, in winter through
the mud, and in summer in the heat of the sun, trudged
from town to town, making and repairing barrels, tubs,
and pails ; pausing awhile wherever he found work,
and departing when there was no more ; happy if he took
along enough to sustain him during his new journey, but cer-
tain of leaving behind him a good name, and of receiving a
weclome when he returned. He was called Francis Veuillot ;
he was a native of Burgundy ; he could not read, and knew
nothing but his trade, which he had learned by prodigious
•efforts of intelligence and courage, since he was the seventh
•or eighth child of a farm laborer. One day while passing
through a village of the Gatinais, he saw at the honeysuckle-
iramed window of a humble dwelling a robust young girl,

* This chapter appeared Id The Avk Maria, Vol. XXXIV.

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who was singing at her work. He walked more slowly ;
then he turned toward her, and he tramped no further. The
maiden was as good as she was pleasing; she liked to
work ; honor shone on her brow amid the flowers of health
and youth ; good sense ruled her conversation ; her fortune
was equal to his ; their hearts were soon paired ; they were
married.” Louis Yeuillot was the first fruit of this happy
union. While yet a child, his parents moved to Paris, and
he was brought up almost without religion ; going, of course,,
to Mass on Sunday, but dependent for his early training on
one of the government schools. The Catechism was taught
in a kind of a way in these establishments, and finally he
made his First Communion. “ Happy they,” he afterward
wrote, “ who can go through life under the protection of the
souvenirs and graces of that beautiful day ! Such felicity
was not for me. Led to the Holy Table by hands which were
ignorant or altogether impious, I approached it without
knowing the holiness of the Banquet ; I left it with all my
stains still upon me, and I returned to it no more.” When
manhood had come upon Yeuillot, the realization of all
he had lost in his youth by having been trained in the ir-
religious schools of the State contributed chiefly to the zeal
of his advocacy of freedom of education.

When thirteen years of age, Louis entered a lawyer’s
office, receiving as stipend twenty francs a month, and a
crust of bread every day for breakfast. The revolution of
1830, which dethroned the elder branch of the Bourbons, ex-
cited the sympathy of the boy. “ I was seventeen years old,”
he tells us, “ when I heard the best youth of the bourgeoisie
congratulating themselves on having demolished the throne
and the altar ; I was eighteen when I saw ferocious beasts
pull down the cross. . . . Already my companions were less
sympathetic, but I still applauded. All that fell excited
their fears ; all that fell excited my joy.” Yery soon the
trembling bourgeois began to found journals in order to de-
fend themselves from the baleful consequences of their own
work, and young Veuillot was offered a position on the Echo
de Rouen , a moderate paper founded by M. Herbert, after-
ward a Minister of State. Without any special preparation

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lie became a journalist ; his first duties were in connection
with the theatres, but he soon launched into politics. His
brother Eugene, the most reliable of his biographers, warns
us not to credit readily all the stories narrated about the
early commencements of the journalistic life of Louis.
Much has been said concerning his innumerable duels ; but
the fact is that he engaged in only two, and in each case he
was the challenged party. In 1832 LouisVeuillot became
editor of the Memorial de la Dordogne , at Perigord. Hither-
to ho had made no classical studies ; he now repaired this
defect. And it was while he was editing the Memorial that
he began to experience a change in his religious senti-
ments, although his full conversion did not take place until
his visit to Eome in 1838. In 1837 he was called to
Paris to collaborate on the Charlede 1830 , a journal found-
ed by Guizot ; but the fall of that statesman precipi-
tated the end of his paper, and Yeuillot passed over to the
Paix. At this time Louis Yeuillot, as we gather from his
fraternal biographer, had lost all sense of the just and unjust,
and lie was little better than one of those condottieri of the
pen who sell their labors in any field with equal pleasure.
While in the lamentable condition produced by such a life
in the case of one destined by nature and grace for better
things, his friend Fulgence Ollivier asked him to accompany
him on a voyage ; he needed the diversion, and accepted the
offer. “ He thought to go to Constantinople, but he went
farther; he went to Eome; he went to baptism.” We would
refer the reader to the charming pages of Home and Loreto
for Yeuillot’s own account of his arrival in the Eternal City
on March 15, 1838 ; of his visits to the monuments of an-
tiquity, and then to the churches ; of his hesitations and strug-
gles ; and finally, of his paternal reception by Pope Gregory
XVL, who perhaps perceived in his prodigal son the future
champion of the Church.

Now that he was a practical Christian, Yeuillot could scarce-
ly resume his place in the officious press of the government of
July ; but he accepted a position in the Ministry of the In-
terior, and while thus occupied he produced his Pilgrimages
in Switzerland, Rome and Loreto, The Holy Rosary , An Honest

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Woman , and other works. But agreeable as was the sinecure-
which he enjoyed, Yeuillot was impelled by both his tem-
perament and his new faith to abandon it. Combat was his
life, and again he entered the journalistic arena ; but now it
was Catholic journalism that he undertook to sustain.
There was then in Paris but one purely Catholic journal, the
Univers Beligfeux established in 1834 by M. Bailly, the found-
er of the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul Since 1839
Veuillot had written for this paper; in 1843 he became its
editor, renouncing for that end a sure place which furnished
him double the revenue he was about to receive. It was his
design to abstain from all systematic opposition to the
government of Louis Philippe, but despite himself Veuillot
soon found himself involved in a struggle concerning the
vital question of the freedom of education. Immediately
after the revolution of 1830 certain Catholics, disgusted with
the sceptical, if not impious, education given by the Univer-
sity, and relying upon the guarantees professedly offered by
the Constitution, liad opened a school. Summoned before
the House of Peers, one of their number, the Count de Monta-
lembert, being a Peer of France, they were condemned. The
recollections of his own experience in the government’s god-
less schools gave great force to the zeal with which Veuillot
entered into the controversy which now ensued. He wrote
an introdution to an account of the trial of the Abbe Com-
balot, who had written a memorial to the bishops on the
dangers of University education (as then given at Paris),
and had been condemned to fifteen days’ imprisonment and
a fine of four thousand francs. For this introduction Veuillot
was condemned to a month’s imprisonment and a fine of three
thousand francs. The governmental and freethinking press
was dumbfounded at the audacity of Catholics who dared to
defend themselves. The absurdity of these despised ignor7
amuses presuming to pretend to a possibility of reason
against such adversaries ! And then, said some of the big-
wigs of the University, and others of the political world — men
like the Duke de Broglie and the Count Portal is, who called
themselves Catholics, and had nevertheless violated the
rights of the Church and of Catholic parents, — how lament-

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431

ably deficient was the editor of the Univers in evangelical
meekness ! In fine, the violent course of the recent convert,
who, to make matters worse, was a thorough Ultramontane at a
time when there were still many Gallicans among the French
clergy, was presented as the cause of all the trouble be-
tween the Church and the government of July. An evident
error ; for the question of the freedom of education had
originated in 1831, before the Univers existed (1).

The revolution of 1848 was favorably received by the
Utiivei'8. Catholics could have few regrets for the Orleans
branch of the Bourbons ; and certain members of the pro-
visional government, such as Lamartine, Arago, and Marie,,
were capable of inspiring confidence. On February 24,
Montalembert being present, Veuillot traced the following,
manifesto for his journal : “ The dynasty of July has suc-
cumbed. The struggle was at an end on the third day. The
revolution is accomplished, and it is one of the most sur-
prising in history. The tempest has carried everything
away ; new men appear on the scene ; God will effect His
designs by means which the world now ignores. To-day, as
yesterday, nothing is possible unless through liberty ; to-day,
as yesterday, religion is the only possible base of society.
Religion is the aroma which keeps liberty from corruption.
It is in Jesus Christ that men are brothers ; it is in Him
that they are free. Real liberty can save everything. The
new government has great duties toward France and toward
the entire world. We trust that it may be able to fulfil
them. All governments have the faculty of being able to
consolidate themselves ; they need only love justice and
frankly promote liberty.” Two days afterward Veuillot re-
minded the provisional government that the Catholics had
done their duty by the government of July, and that the new
regime might expect the same fidelity. The Univers , added
the writer, did not believe, “ with Gallican theology, in the
inamissible right of crowns ; but, with Catholic theology, in
the right of peoples.” But the Univers did not long remain
' a partisan of that republic which it had so warmly welcomed.
Alongside of Lamartine were Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc ;

(1) See our dissertation on Montalembert, in Vol. v.

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•the former distributed his fiery circulars, demanding an
assembly “ capable of understanding and accomplishing the
work of the people ” ; he wanted deputies who would be “ all
men of the past, and not of the future ” ; that is, Robespierres,
and not common-sense patriots. But having little confi-
dence in most of his allies, whose principles he regarded as
little better than those of the revolutionists, Veuillot re-
served complete liberty of action for his journal. When the
•Catholics were divided as to the candidature of General
Cavaignac and Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte for the
presidency of the republic, the Uniters called for the in-
tentions of the aspirants in regard to the Roman question.
The capital of Christendom was then in the hands of the Rev-
olution, Pius IX. having fled to Gaeta after the assassination
of his Minister, Rossi. “It is not the Pope,” wrote Veuillot,
“ but the Papacy that we must now defend ; it is the key-
stone of European civilization, the work of God, that must
be preserved from a horde of wretches, whose strength is the
ruin and opprobrium of the world. He who will manifest
sufficient intelligence and heart to pronounce himself the
enemy of these scoundrels, in order to break with them
entirely, to trample on their bloody standards, to prefer their
poisoned daggers to the ignominy of their praise ; he who,
before these atheists, will proclaim himself a man of God,
and will reply to their clamors with the Sign of the Cross, —
that man will deserve our suffrages.” To this direct appeal
Cavaignac, though sufficiently courageous, made no answer ;
he had to account to his political friends. Louis Napoleon
seemed more disposed to satisfy the Catholics. At this
juncture Veuillot was asked to meet Louis Napoleon ; but he
declined, alleging that Montalembert was the head of the
Catholic party. Then appeared the letter of the prince to
the papal nuncio, in which that candidate disavowed the
conduct of his cousin, the Prince of Canino, at Rome. He
“ regretted with his whole soul that the Prince of Canino
had not realized that the temporal power of the venerable
head of the Church was intimately connected with the eclat,
of Catholicism, and with the liberty and independence of
Italy.” Although the Univers did not plainly avow itself in

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favor of the presidency of Louis Napoleon, it was now clear
that it might be ranked among his partisans ; and con-
sequently numbers of Catholic votes went to secure the
majority which effected his election.

In less than two years the Second French .Republic had
convinced the world that its tendencies were socialistic, even
though the legislative majority was monarchical. For this
majority was divided into Legitimists, who themselves were
split into the pure and fusionist; Orleanists, or the non-
descript devotees of the younger and usurping branch of the
royal house ; and finally, Bonapartists. Yeuillot was person-
ally inclined to a submission of the Orleans princes to the
Count of Chambord, the grandson of Charles X., and, as
Henry Y., legitimate king of France. But when all hopes of
a submission, or even of a fusion, had vanished, thanks to
the influence of Thiers on the Duchess d’Orleans, what were
the Catholics to expect, now that 1852, which would conclude
the term of the prince-president, was at hand ? During his
journeys in the provinces, Louis Napoleon had arranged that
he should be invited to restore the Empire ; Yeuillot saw
that the prince was the sole obstacle to the triumph of the
socialists. So far in accord with Montalembert, who had
not yet abandoned the prince-president, Veuillot acquiesced
in the Coup d'etat. He was “ neither conquered, nor con-
queror, nor malcontent”; France now possessed “a govern-
ment and an army, a head and an arm ” ; the new ruler was
to be supported, “ that they might afterward have the right
to counsel him.” “ Property need not now anticipate pillage ;
families need not fear dishonor ; religion will not mean mar-
tyrdom. The head of the Cllurch is no longer on the road to a
new exile, a new Calvary. The foundations of society are no
longer threatened by sophism, armed with poniards. Public
blasphemy has ceased.” Undoubtedly Veuillot was no
prophet when he saw in the new Empire an anti-revolution-
ary government, and in Louis Napoleon the material for an-
other Charlemagne ; but we must not forget that the Coup
d'fitcit was followed by many reparative measures. And ac-
cording to M. de Mongeot, a judicious biographer of Veuillot,
the prince-president would have suppressed the University,

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that receptacle of every evil doctrine, had it not been for the*
objections of certain bishops, who feared that they could not
yet supply its place. Again, as Montalembert expressed the
idea, our editor was a witness, not a guarantee, for Louis
Napoleon. And he reserved the right to combat the new
government, if it deviated from the right path ; refusing, in
order to do this with more freedom, every offer of preferment
and every favor.

It was about the time of the Coup d ' iJtat that the famous
controversy on the classics began ; and this contest was, for
a while, one of the most painful in which, Yeuillot ever en-
gaged. In 1851 the Abbe Gaume, a distinguished theolog-
ical writer, had denounced the disastrous influence of the
pagan classics, and had advocated the substitution of works
by Christian authors. He was sustained by several prelates,
among whom was Cardinal Gousset. Yeuillot defended the*
thesis advanced by Gaume ; and Mgr. Dupanloup, in a letter
to the professors of his preparatory seminary, justified the
olden methods, and attacked rather vividly the partisans of
the new idea. Yeuillot responded with equal energy, and
then the prelate of Orleans interdicted the reading of the
Univers in his seminary. Such judges as Cardinal Gousset
thought that Mgr. Dupanloup had gone too far ; they held
that a journal had the right to discuss an opinion emitted
in an episcopal act, provided it did not blame the act in itself.
Mgr. Dupanloup tried to procure a collective warning from
all the French bishops to the Univers, but he could obtain
the signatures of only a small minority. Finally, Yeuillot
requested his friends to terminate the dispute : “We need

not defend ourselves ; in fact, we have said only what we
have said. Malevolent or unintelligent interpretations will
fall of themselves, and useful truth will alone remain. If
on our part, any exaggerations have been committed, we
trust that they may be forgotten.” In her own good time
Koine spoke on the matter ; the Christian classics obtained
more attention in the French seminaries, while the good
faith and learning of the Abbe Gaume were attested by his
promotion to the Roman prelacy.

An incident of more gravity succeeded the controversy

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on the classics. In 1850 Veuillot had begun the publication
of a collection of new works which would constitute a com-
plete “ apology ” of Christianity. Among his colaborers were
the Benedictines Dom Pitra and Dom Gueranger, the Abbe
Martinet, and Bishop Bendu. The great Spanish orator,
Donoso Cortes, wrote for this collection his solid essay on
Catholicism , Liberalism and Socialism , in which he con-
tended that the second system was necessarily the precur-
sor of the third. Against this idea the Abbe Gaduel, vicar-
general of Orleans, arose, discerning in the work of the
great Spaniard a tissue of errors, and taking occasion
to involve in his censures the entire religious press when-
ever it undertook to treat of theological matters. At this
time Donoso Cortes occupied in Spain an unchallenged
position as chief apostle of the truth in the world of letters ;
and, unknown to Gaduel, he had taken the course generally
followed, pace Gaduel, by all prudent Catholic laymen in
similar contingencies ; that is, he had submitted his ideas to
the judgment of authorized theologians. In reply to Gad-
uel, Donoso Cortes submitted his book to Borne, and he was
fully justified. But Veuillot had less equanimity than his
Spanish friend, and in his defense of the religious press he
wielded his ready weapon of raillery very freely against his
adversary. Unable to reply, the latter complained to the
archbishop of Paris, Mgr. Sibour. This prelate then pro-
hibited the Univers to all the priests and religious communi-
ties of his diocese. The archiepiscopal act was applauded by
the entire revolutionary press ; but many prelates, in public
letters, manifested sympathy for the condemned journal.

Louis Veuillot was then in Borne, and he appealed to*
the Pontiff, writing to his staff on the same day : “ Judged
by the Father of all the faithful, by the highest authority
on earth, we shall know with certainty what we must doy
and we will do it at once. We will continue our work or
wre will abandon it with equal security ; asking pardon of
God and of men for having been unable to do good, or for
having done evil.” Six days afterward he received from
Mgr. Fioramonti, Secretary for Latin Letters to His Holi-
ness, a consoling letter, which, while inviting him to moder-

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ntion, augured well for the success of his appeal. And
very soon the supreme authority took up the defense of the
religious press. In an Apostolic Letter to the bishops of
France, dated March 21, 1853, Pope Pius IX. said : “ We
must here remind you of the ardent advice which we gave
four years ago, to all the bishops of the Catholic world :
that they should exert every effort to induce talented and
healthily educated men to devote themselves to writings cal-
culated to enlighten the mind and to dissipate the darkness of
error now so prevalent Again, therefore, while urging you
to remove from your flocks the poison of bad books and jour-
nals, we insist that you extend every protection to the men
who consecrate their energies to the production of works
whereby Catholic teachings may be propagated, whereby
the venerable rights of the Holy See may be fully recognized,
and whereby the obscurity of error be dissipated. Your
episcopal charity should excite the ardor of these Catholic
writers who are animated by so good a spirit ; and if, per-
chance, they sometimes commit some mistakes, advise them
paternally and prudently.”

This letter of the Pontiff was generally regarded as a
justification of Veuillot, and Archbishop Sibour hastened to
lift the sentence which he had so rashly pronounced. But
the adversaries of Veuillot were not reduced to silence : in
less than two years from the appearance of the above papal
letter there was issued an anonymous pamphlet, which, en-
titled “ The Univers Judged by Itself,” endeavored to show
by means of citations, that the said journal was “ revolution-
ary, turbulent, without respect for authority, without
charity, full of injuries and insults, which constantly in-
volved itself in contradictions, in the name of the Church.”
Another Catholic journal, I! Ami de la Religion , upheld the
pamphlet ; but the incriminated editor found many dis-
tinguished defenders, among whom were Mgr. Parisis, arch-
bishop of Arras, and the ablest journal in Italy, the Armo -
nia. It was proved that most of the pamphleteer’s cita-
tions were made in bad faith ; that they were presented
without regard to the context ; that in many cases they were
truncated, and even falsified. And the Ai'monia well in-

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sisted tliat if the Univers were a revolutionary journal, it
would hot be the object of revolutionary hatred in every
land, and the Roman Pontiff would not have extended his
protection to it. While the discussion was at its height*
and while Yeuillot was taking the first steps to vindicate
himself before the tribunals, the assassination of Mgr.
Sibour saddened the hearts of all Catholics, and Yeuillot
generously let the matter drop.

When after the Crimean War, the Count Walewski, rep-
resentative of France at the Congress of Paris, allowed the
Count di Cavour, agent for Piedmont, to menace the pontifi-
cal government, Veuillot protested against this open attack
on the rights of the Church. When the Italian war of 1859
opened, he asked whether Napoleon III., allying himself
with the revolutionists, was not about to undo his work of
’49. When the preliminaries of Villafranca were signed, he
rejoiced at the end of a war “ which had caused a fear
lest the Revolution, rather than liberty, would be the gain-
er.” But he found in these preliminaries “ no recognition
of the right of Revolt ; Lombardy did not give herself, but
was rather ceded by Francis Joseph, and given by Napo-
leon”; he was sufficiently optimistic to trust that Piedmont
would prove “one Catholic nation the more.” Alas! Na-
poleon III. allowed Victor Emmanuel to contend for the whole
of Italy, not even excepting the Papal States. Then Veuillot
entered upon the combat which he had vainly tried to avoid.
When the brochure , “ The Pope and the Congress,” written
by La Gueronniere, but inspired by Napoleon, appeared, ad-
vocating the spoliation of the Pontiff as a political necessity^
Pius IX. characterized it, in reply to an address from the
Count de Goyon, commander of the French army of occupa-
tion in Rome, as “ a signal monument of hypocrisy and an
ignoble tissue of contradictions.” The imperial authorities
would have prevented the Univers from publishing the papal
rebuke, but Veuillot knew his duty. His brother Eugene
says that- just as he had resolved to ignore the imperial
wishes, a friend asked him if he realized what he was doing.
“ We are dying,” was the reply. The discourse of the Pon-
tiff was published on January 11, 1860; but the government

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hesitated. On the 28th, however, Yeuillot received the En-
cyclical Nullis eerie , condemning the last aggressions against
the Papal States. The document was at once translated ;
and as he sent it to the printers, the brave editor said : “Our
paper will be suppressed to-morrow.” So it happened, but
Yeuillot had triumphed ; for when the government realized
that the news of the pontifical action had already transpired,
it authorized the other journals to publish the Encyclical.
Thus it was, as Veuillot wrote to the Pope, that an Encycli-
cal of Pius IX., that of 1853, had given life to the Uirivcrs,
and another one had taken that life. Twice Yeuillot asked
for authorization to resume his journal, but in vain ; how-
ever, in 1867, while Napoleon was effecting his tentative evo-
lution toward liberalism, and which was to involve freedom
•of the press, the permission was accorded. Pius IX. sent a
sum of money to further the good work ; but as it did not
prove necessary, Veuillot turned it over to the Peter’s Pence.
The attitude of the Uni vers did not change toward the lib-
eralized Empire. When, jusj; previous to the plebiscite of
May 7, 1870, Emile Ollivier, the new Minister, solicited its
support, he was told that the imperial government would
have to promise the preservation of the territories still re-
maining to the Pope. As this assurance was not given, our
journal remained neutral, being unwilling to vote with the
revolutionists against the plebiscite, and unable to support
an administration which refused satisfaction to the Catholics.
Meanwhile the General Council of the Vatican was celebrat-
ed, and the favorite thesis of Veuillot was solemnly prom-
ulgated. Well has it been said that in the Constitution
which promulgated the dogma of Papal Infallibility, “ Tout
Veuillot est Id , et tout Veuillot West q'une victoire .”

The revolution of September 4, 1870, did not surprise Veu-
illot ; Sedan was a consequence of Castlefidardo. Remain-
ing in Paris during the siege, he sustained the Government
of the National Defense, and continued to hope against hope.
He was a constant adversary of the Commune, and the ar-
ticles which he wrote against its insane leaders form his in-
teresting book entitled Paris Dur ing the Two Sieges . When
peace had returned, he seized every occasion to protest

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439

against the brutal seizure of Rome on September 20, 1870.
One day the members of the right had almost interdicted
the right of speech to M. de Belcastel, who wished to inter-
polate the government on this subject ; and Veuillot severe-
ly attacked this Catholic majority for thus appearing to
abandon the cause of the Head of the Church. For this
action he was blamed by many persons of his own party ; and
even Pius IX., so partial to the Univers, complained of
his too zealous defenders. Veuillot bowed to the rebuke, de-
claring himself ready to break his pen if it was deemed a
danger or useless. But a few days afterward Mgr. Mer-
millod, then vicar-apostolic of Geneva, and supposed to be,
in this matter, an authorized interpreter of the sentiments of
the Pontiff, informed the entire staff of the journal that
Pius IX. blessed their work. When Marshal MacMahon
was called to the presidency, May 24, 1873, Veuillot wel-
comed the loyal soldier who seemed disposed to favor a
monarchical restoration. We need not detail how such ef-
forts failed, and how MacMahon showed himself pliant to
the dictates of the secret societies — probably because he
belonged to them. Enough here to note that this adminis-
tration disliked the Univers. Twice the journal was sus-
pended : once at the request of Bismarck, it was thought, for
having published a letter of the bishop of Perigueux on the
religious persecutions in Germany ; and again for an article
which displeased the Spanish Cabinet of the day.

In this short sketch we have confined our remarks to
the public life of a great soldier of the Church ; his private
life “ est de V intime ,” as Eugenie de Guerin would say. Even
his brother hesitated to trench upon this privacy : “ To
speak of his habits would be a puerility ; and as for his joys
and griefs, I have shared them too entirely to display them
before the indifferent.” But a trace of his joys and griefs is
to be found in his works. It is believed that one chapter of
Here and There gives the history of his marriage ; and in
his masterpiece, The Nuptial Chamber , are depicted many
of his chagrins. After the death of his beloved wife, Louis
Veuillot found a faithful companion in an adored sister, Mile.
Elise Veuillot, whose portrait he outlines in Here and There:

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“ Your sweet and noble countenance is beautiful in our eyes
as in those of the angels, by the cares which have prematurely
impressed their mark. For the love of God you refused your-
self to the service of God, and for charity’s sake you deprived
yourself of the joys of charity. You do not fully enjoy the
peace of the cloister, nor the care of the poor, nor an aposto-
late in the world ; and your great heart has known how to fore-
go all that is grand and perfect like itself. A servant to
your brother, a mother to his orphans, you have sunk your
life in little duties. You have given awray your youth, liber-
ty, and future ; you are no longer yourself, but one who is no
more, a dead wife and a buried mother. You are a virgin-
widow, a religious without a veil, a spouse without her rights,
, a mother without the name. You sacrifice your days and your
vigils to children who do not call you mother, and you have
shed a mother’s tears upon the graves of those who were not
your children. And amid all this labor, this abnegation and
trial, you seek and you find for repose other infirmities to
succor, other weaknesses to strengthen, other wounds to heal.
May you be blessed by God as you are by our hearts ! ”
Louis Yeuillot went to his reward on the 7th of April, 1883.

A profound and judicious critic, the Abbe Le Noir, compar-
ing Yeuillot, the journalist of the sovereign and infallible Pa-
pacy, with Emile de Girardin, the journalist of liberty, says :
“ Girardin had no governmental system, and he was defeated
by all our governments, not one of which either understood
or desired liberty. V euillot had a fixed, clear, and simple sys-
tem, which the French clergy adopted ; the Papacy upheld
him even against the bishops, and he ended by obtaining a
complete triumph in the Catholic Church. Veuillot created
a style which was adapted to the clergy of his time ; he
found the tone which was to touch their heart-strings ; he
gave them in his journal the aliment they craved, and he be-
came omnipotent with his readers. Certain prelates tried
to crush him : they merely rendered his vitality greater.
In the eyes of Rome and his public he was right, and after-
ward the Council of the Vatican solemnly proclaimed his
thesis ” (1).

(1) The Dictionary of Beryier , Adapted to the Intellectual Movement of the Latter
Half of the Nineteenth Century , Art. VeuiUot. Paris, 1876.

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CESARE CANTU, PRINCE OP MODERN HISTORIANS. 441

. CHAPTER XXI.

CESARE CANTU, PRINCE OF MODERN HISTORIANS. *

Modern Italy has reason to be proud of her knights of the
pen. To say nothing of her ecclesiastics who have distin-
guished themselves in current literature^ and whose name is
legion, no other country has produced, in this century, a lit-
erary galaxy which merits comparison with that formed by
Pellico, Manzoni, Monti, Brofferio, Foscolo, Romagnosi,.
Grossi, Troya, D’Azeglio, and Cantu. Our century has pro-
duced more celebrated mediocrities than any of its predeces-
sors ; and, since the inception of her sham-encouraging Uni-
tarian revolution, Italy has brought forth her share. But
literary mediocrities are soon forgotten in Italy. There, few
mistake voluminousness for exhaustiveness ; obscurity is not
lauded as profundity ; petulancy is not taken for vivacity ;
specious smartness does not pass for wit. As a rule, literary
pre-eminence is attained in Italy by the deserving alone ; and
among those contemporary waiters who have won the re-
spectful admiration of the Italian historical and literary
world, the first place, both for the number and the variety of
his w’orks, must be accorded to Cesare Cantu, who w^ent to his
eternal reward in 1894, in the ninetieth year of liis age. The
chief . title of Cantu to the gratitude of scholars throughout
the wrorld is his Universal History , a wrork which excels all
similarly styled lucubrations as a persevering research for
historical truth, and as a frank expression of that truth. It
is a voluminous work ; but the scholar never meets w ith any-
thing that might be omitted without diminution of its utility,
or even with little passages wrhich have no necessary bearing
on the subject-matter. As all the peoples of the earth pass
'in chronological order before the student, he feels as though
he were contemporary with each of them ; so clearly does his
Mentor philosophize, as the procession moves on, concern-
ing the social, political, and religious development of all.
Characteristic details abound. The events are so grouped,,

* This chapter appeared in Thk Avk Maria, Vol. XL.

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that the scholar can consider them from a general as well as
from a particular point of view ; and during the entire un-
folding of the panorama, he inspects humanity as it accords
with or transgresses the law of justice and progress. In the
perusal of this admirable History , we often discern the hand
of him who has touched the most delicate fibres of the heart
in his poems and romances ; on the other hand, the historian
is ever calm on his judicial bench as he descants on past and
present, and penetrates into the future. No historian has so
well understood the science which is termed the philosophy
of history ; that science which deduces from the events of the
past the laws obeyed by human passions, the aspirations of
men and of nations, and which aids us in anticipating the
future. The work of Cantu is pre-eminently a living work ;
it is not a mere corpse of the past which he presents to our
contemplation. The men whom he evokes are living charac-
ters, not the mere shades and names of men. And he is no
mere shade of a historian, when he judges these personages ;
he is sagacious, trenchant, and precise, utterly void of that
eclecticism and that scepticism which are the dominating
features of nearly all modern would-be historians.

One cannot but think that the poetical genius of Cantu
helped him to attain to historical eminence. Of course few
poets make good historians. Not one true poet in ten is prop-
erly equipped to court the Muse of History ; and the
chances are ten to one that the properly equipped
poet will sacrifice historical truth to the exigencies of
dramatic effect. But poetic fire is of great advantage to the
competent historical delineator, as the works of Cantu well
evince. Our author shows that a man can be both poet and
historian, although such success is exceptional. Schiller,
for instance, a good poet, and an admirable one when he
speaks the truth, is but a poor historian. He essayed a
history of that brigandage and butchery, that chaos of con-
trary elements, which is termed the Thirty Tears’ War ; which
he would never have approached had he not hoped to make
capital out of its tremendously dramatic personages. Well,
Schiller found the material for a thrilling work ; but, as we
have remarked elsewhere, he brought forth an incoherent

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CESARE CANTU, PRINCE OF MODERN HISTORIANS.

413

mass of platitudinous declamations. In fine, Schiller ceased
to be a poet without becoming a historian. Such was not the
destiny of Cantu.

Our author’3 Universal History was, so to speak, the tree
which put forth those fruitful branches, the History of the
Italians , the History of a Hu ndred Years , and The Last Thirty
Years. After the revolution of *48, during that time of repose
which preceded the Unitarian movement of *60 which was to
“ regenerate ” Italy, Cantu deemed it well to draw the atten-
tion of the world to the lessons furnished by the events which
were consequent on the great French Eevolution of 1789, and
which were calculated to serve as warnings for the revolution-
ists Qf the future. This intention was realized in the History
of a Hundred Years , dealing with the periodfrom 1750 to 1850,
of the latter part of which Cantu could well say : “ Quorum
pars magna fui” He had already experienced the bitter
fate which is reserved for one who declines to be the slave of
any faction, and who, recognizing the merits and faults of all,
becomes a target for the venomous shafts of diametrically
opposite parties (1). Nevertheless, he had undertaken the
task of describing that magnificent but doleful period, with the
sole desire to manifest the truth, without fear of either des-
pots or popular passions. He felt that he was a re-creator,
and for such a one truth is necessary. In this work Cantu
read severe lessons to Austria ; but he told just as severe
truths to the leaders of ’48. Intensely patriotic, he never
deviated from the principles of sound morality ; and when, in
concluding his exhortations, he questioned himself as to the
prospects of Italy’s gaining her independence, he made Italy
reply to Austria in the words used by Matteo Yisconti to
Guido Torriano when the latter asked him when he would
return to power : “ When thy sins shall have become greater
than mine.” The volumes created a great sensation through-
out continental Europe ; but the French version was a sad
mutilation of the original ; and when the author complained
to M. lienee, the Napoleonically-inclined translator, he re-
ceived the reply : “ Do you think that there is as much free-

(1) For an account of Canto's experience with the Congregation of the Index, see our
VoL Hi., p. 189. in Note.

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dom of speech in France as there is in Italy ? ” And this
question was put before the Italians had tried their Unitarian
experiment. In his Last Thirty Years , describing events in
which his own part was so great, Cantu never loses the se-
rene tranquillity which is one of his characteristics ; and, ever
loyal in his own sentiments, he is indignant when he beholds
crime figuring as a chosen instrument of statesmen. He
says of Cavour : “ He despised men sufficiently to avail him-
self of their wickednesses, and he introduced a corruption
which contaminated Italian regeneration.” He paints in
gloomy colors the condition of his country since she suc-
cumbed to the domination of the Brethren of the Three
Points ; but the facts which he presents are so patent, that the
book has found few censors.

In the Heretics of Italy , our author depicts the vicissi-
tudes of the Church in Italy with broad and masterly
lines. The constant theme of this work is the often for-
gotten fact that civilization has always developed under the
influence of the Church, and has always retrograded when
that influence has been impeded. The conclusion of the
three large volumes is in these words : “ After a study of
Christianity in the light of feason, of history, and of con-
science, our respect for Catholic tradition has been con-
firmed. Our studies have furnished us new reasons for the
conviction that the Christian organization, infusing a spirit
of subordination into the masses, confers on men the great-
est amount of happiness. Of course wre speak of that felic-
ity which subjects the will not to violence, but to the sweet
empire of a persuasive morality. We remain convinced
that the most ancient of powers, the sacerdotal principality,
is also the most venerable and the most generous ; that it is
the keystone of the social edifice and the guarantee of the
liberty of our nation, because it can oppose to social convul-
sions the sole force which can curb them — conscience.”

With Manzoni and Grossi, Cantu completes the triumvir-
ate of modern Italian poetry. As for his power as a novel-
ist, we may say that no romance, not even The Bethrothed
of Manzoni, has furnished such exquisite pleasure to refined
and sympathetic souls as his Alargherita Pusterla . And

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CESARE CANTU, PRINCE OF MODERN HISTORIANS. ' 445

Cantu could write for “ the people.” His honesty was
equal to his intelligence, and he always loved what it is
the fashion to style “ the lower orders.” For the benefit of
the working class he wrote many books, small in volume,
but of immense value, — books which speak to the heart of
the toiler, although dictated by solid reason and filled with
extraordinary erudition. One of these works, Good Sense
and Good Heart , published in 1870, has been pronounced,
by competent critics of every school of thought, to be the best
educational work given to workingmen in modem times. In
this book Cantu speaks to the people in their own language,
displaying no party feeling ; and urging his readers to econo-
my, benevolence, sobriety, and above all to activity, which
he regards as the vocation of man on earth, an instrument
of that progress which is the characteristic of true civiliza-
tion. The stupendous amount of historical knowledge pos-
sessed by Cesare Cantu, the immense amount of reading,
writing, and other labor in which his nearly ninety years of
life were spent, enabled him to adorn and fructify this volume
with a profusion of examples illustrating every precept
which he inculcates. And he ever remembers that the mind
of his reader, a “ man of the people,” must not be fatigued ;
so he drops at times into a bit of poetry, which is both recrea-
tive and edifying. In fact, he so miscuit utile dulci that, as a
certain critic observes, his useful appears to delight in
swimming and splashing in sweetness.

Another beautiful work for the improvement of the toiler,
called The Workingman s Portfolio , is admirably practical.
It is a an autobiography of a young Neapolitan orphan who
goes to Lombardy to learn a trade. Naturally restless and
fond of novelty, he continually changes masters and trades ;
picks up a little knowledge of everything ; learns much about
the vicissitudes of Italy, and participates in some of the re-
cent ones ; studies considerably ; and through all his adven-
tures ever thinks of the injunction of his deceased mother :
“ Remember that God sees you ! ” Around this simple frame-
work Cantu entwines much practical philosophy, moral
counsels, refutations of the socialistic theories of the day,
and advice concerning the oft-recurring conflict between the

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interests of the employee and those of the employer. Cer-
tain chapters on 44 A Father’s Experience Narrated to Hi&
Children,” 44 One for All and All for One,” “ Rich and Poor, ”
and on “ Strikes,” are a perfect quintessence of all the
possible arguments against communistic and socialistic
dreams. Throughout the entire book Cantu evinces such
sincere devotion to the moral and intellectual progress of
the toiling classes, and exhales so pronounced an odor
of honesty, that even those of his compatriots who do
not sympathize with his 44 clerical ” aspirations, have fain
avowed that every workingman should have a copy of the
book, and that the government should introduce it into every
public educational institution. In a letter to the author,
the illustrious French publicist Laboulaye says : “ You have
written more extensive and graver works, but none have
attested so well as this one your great love for the 4 people ’
and your real patriotism.” However, the Italian govern-
mental authorities have stigmatized the book as “ anti-na-
tional ” in its sentiments ; and they discourage its circulation
among those whom it would undoubtedly prevent from be-
coming a peril to the State.

“ Perseverance ” was ever the motto of the longlife which
Cantii devoted to the glory of the God who gave great tal-
ents to him. In 1873 he thus replied to greetings sent by
the printers of Milan : 44 For a long time your eyes have
been directed toward a workingman who wills strongly.
Like yourselves, that workman was born in humble circum-
stances. When twenty years of age, he became the father
of nine orphans ; and, without fortune or any kind of protec-
tion, he resolved to preserve the independence of his opinions,
without any adulation of either the great or the lowly.
Asking for no other Maecenas than the public, he produced
books which are more conscientious than scientific. De-
prived of his liberty and of his country, defrauded of the
fruit of his youthful labors, attacked in his most sincere
aspirations and in his dearest affections, made a target by
all who thought or wrote differently from himself, he adopt-
ed for his motto the word, Perseverando. When you ac-
company him to the cemetery, say : 4 A good workman
has passed away. Let us imitate his perseverance. ’”

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CESABE CANTU, PRINCE OF MODERN HISTORIANS. 447

The charity of Cantu well deserved to be so termed, for it
was reasonable ; and it did not prevent his manifestation of
a noble indignation, when he found himself face to face with
the enemies of the Church, and of Christian truth. He never
cared to hide his disgust when he was compelled to listen to
pretentious chatter like that of one of his scientific com-
patriots who smartly declared : “ At length we know how

much phosphorus is required to make a Dante.” To men
of that ignoble stamp, Cantu would address but one serious
observation : “ The studious man will not ignore the re-

searches and the conjectures of the grand seekers who, per-
severingly although sadly, pursue that Infinite which they
cannot reach ; but he will not attempt to raise an edifice on
systems which are not only discordant, but which contra-
dict each other. Yesterday we were told to listen to Renan,
who insisted that Monotheism was instinctive in the Semitic
race ; to-day we are directed to Soury, who affects to show
that the Hebrews were Polytheists.” To those who are
willing to derive their descent immediately from monkeys
although possibly mediately from the hand of God, Cantu
adduces language as a decisive proof of the immediately di-
vine origin of man : “ Language is a treasure of wisdom
which is superior to all our meditations ; its origin cannot be
ascribed to reflection or to conscience, since in its very
beginnings it was the vehicle of metaphysical conception so
fertile and so logical that the would-be scientist is at a loss
for an explanation.” To the so-called reformers who to-day
foster one of the most pregnant evils which now afflict civil-
ized society — to all who exalt popular instruction to the det-
riment of popular education, Cantu proclaimed : “ Attention
should be paid to the hearts of men much more than to the
alphabet and to gymnastics.” To those whose adoration of the
nineteenth century does not hide the fact that Anarchism is
now a power, Cantu prescribes: “We must lift up those

who are on their knees ; we must not prostrate those who

stand erect The laborer may need to gain his daily

bread by the sweat of liis brow ; but it should not be neces-
sary for him to live with tears always in his eyes.” To the
France of his day Cantu spoke the language of confidence in

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

the destinies of the land which had shown to the world tho
Gesta Dei per Francos ; he did not hide from himself the
melancholy fact that modern France is “a clinic of all tho
social diseases,” but he bade Frenchmen remember : “ The
literature of France is the literature of all Europe ; her lan-
guage is the universal vehicle of all ideas ; her tribune seems
to be the tribune of the peoples who have none ; and with
more truth than ever the saying of Jefferson may now be quot-
ed : ‘ Every man has two countries — his own and France.’ ”
To the misguided zealots who in 1848 were confounding the
♦cause of the Pope-King with that of the Austrian campers
on Italian soil, Cantu, who had just brought his Universal His-
tory down to his own time, complained that they knew not
the significance of “ Pius IX., who in his doubts threw him-
self at the feet of the crucifix”; and he called on the Italians
to learn from the political attitude of the Pontiff, and from
all history, “ how reason is on the side of those who expect a
regeneration of their country, not from revolutionary despot-
ism, but from a healthy moderation.”

CHAPTER XXH.

. THE PLACE OF THE MIRACULOUS IN HISTORY. THE
MIRACLES OF LOURDES.*

THE MIRACULOUS NOT UNHISTORICAL PER SE.

Few incredulists cherish any kind feeling for mere author-
ity ; but nevertheless, the entire school expects men to submit
their intelligences to the ukase of its own ipse dixit, and to
do so with as much simplicity as was ever evinced by devout
royalists when they doffed their caps before an edict issued,
“ De par le Hoi .” We can fancy that we see, in every part
of the habitable globe, placards warning God that the school
of “ pure science,” of “ pure reason,” of “ rational criticism,”
denies His right to transcend the laws of His own creation.
However, a very respectable number of persons contend that

* The first part of this dissertation appeared in the Ave Maria , Vol. xl.

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THE PLACE OP THE MIRACULOUS IN HISTORY. 449

oven at the close of this progressive nineteenth century mir-
acles do occur in Christendom. The incredulist, inflated by
the spirit of modern “ criticism,” may sneer as he reads of
the faith displayed at the venerated shrines of Lourdes, of
La Salette, or of Ste. Anne de Beaupre by so many thousands
of every age, condition, and mental calibre ; but perforce he
acknowledges that the ancient theories of the miraculous are
not yet efficaciously exploded. In our day the sincere stu-
dent of history thanks Providence — or mayhap the stars which
take the place of Providence in his imagination — that he
lives in thismuch-vaunted period of “ scientific criticism.” If
he has already acquired a certain amount of solid informa-
tion as to the nature and history of the critical faculty, he
realizes that a critical school is not a peculiar appanage of
the nineteenth century : that the best modern scholars admit
that the so-called Dark Ages witnessed the agitation of
nearly all the questions that have been mooted and disputed
in our days of presumed intellectual pre-eminence. How-
ever, this real student perceives that modern days have be-
held some advance in the apparatus wherewith man exercises
his perceptive faculties ; and he is grateful for his share in
the improvement. But does the modern school of “ scientific
criticism ” always deserve its name ? Do all its professed
devotees follow out in practice the principles inculcated by
its canons, and which they really venerate so long as there
is merely question of abstract theory ? The Bationalistic
school can not close its eyes to the fact that Catholic scholars
and — alas ! it must be admitted — monks founded the most
solid and severe school of historical criticism which the
world has yet admired ; but, despite this fact, the arrogant
tribe proclaims that a Catholic has no place in historical
science, since he is necessarily subservient to prejudices which
are foreign to science. This proclamation is made whenever
it is asserted that a narrative of a miracle is a mere legend,
and that legends have no rights in history. In other words,
Dom Mabillon, Dom Bouquet, and other founders of that
school of historical erudition to which the Benedictines have
given their name, are to be dismissed as incorrigible dunces.

We are asked to believe that miracles have no place in

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history ; and therefore, since we do believe in miracles, to
write ourselves down as outlaws in the historico-critical
domain. But we would ask our Bationalistic friends what
method of historical criticism one should follow when, in the
course of his inquiries, he finds himself face to face with a
presumed occurrence which is certainly strange, and which
Catholics insist upon regarding as a miracle. Is he to sum-
marily dismiss the alleged fact as an impossibility ? Prof.
Huxley would reply in the negative. He frankly admits
that the impossibility of miracles can not be sustained, al-
though he knows of nothing wrilick calls upon him to qualify
the grave verdict of Hume : “ There is not to be found in all
history any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men
of such unquestioned goodness, education, and learning as
to secure us against all delusion in themselves ; of such un-
doubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of
any design to deceive others ; of such credit and reputation
in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case
of their being detected in any falsehood ; and, at the same
time, attesting facts performed in such a public manner and
in so celebrated a part of the world as to render the detec-
tion . unavoidable ; all of which circumstances are requisite
to give us full assurance in the testimony of men.” We do
not propose to question the necessity of adopting these
stringent canons ; but, admitting the postulate of Hume,
Huxlej^, and others of that ilk, we ask our Rationalistic friends
how they proceed in the contingency just mentioned. If
they are honest, they will candidly reply that when they meet a
passage recording some strikingly strange event, their first
and immediate proceeding is to note whether the narrative
accords with their own preconceived ideas concerning the
subject matter. They will avow that if, at this early stage
of the so-called investigation, they discover that their notions
have sustained no unpleasant shock, then, and only then, will
they bring the canons of criticism to bear upon the point at
issue. It is only when they have assured themselves that
there is no likelihood of contagion from the new applicant
for admittance into their self-arrogated domain, that they
deign to lift the quarantine, and allow the detained to be-

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THE PLACE OF THE MIRACULOUS IN HISTORY. 451

come amenable to those canons which are at once invoked in
every other class of cases. Then indeed will be heard the
usual challenges : Where and how did this narrative origi-

nate ? Who was its author ? Does he merit credit ? What
means of verifying his story did he enjoy? and so on. We
suppose, of course, that our Rationalistic friends are true
students and well-equipped critics ; for these interrogatories
imply that an intricate investigation is imminent, and the
audacious individual who would omit it in a matter of any
moment would not deserve the name of scholar, let him be
Catholic or Rationalist. Now wre imagine that most of our
readers have opined that the ordinary canons of criticism
should be put into practice before any use of, or at least
independently of the quarantine regimen which the advocates
of “ pure reason” so zealously enforce. We shall illustrate
our position and that of these gentry by two examples.

In the year 484 Huneric, King of the Vandals, an obstin-
ate Arian who was then master of the Mediterranean coast
of Africa, and had begun a cruel persecution of all Catholics
who would not deny the consubstantiality of the Son with
the Father, one day ordered that several of the recalcitrants
should have their tongues plucked out at the roots. Six con-
temporary authors record that after their mutilation, the*,
victims continued to proclaim the divinity of our Saviour in
as audible and distinct tones as had hitherto been natural
to them. These six writers are : Victor, bishop of Vite (1)
the Emperor Justinian, the third successor of Zeno (2) ; iEneas,
of Gaza (3) ; Procopius (4) ; the Count Marcelliuus (5) ; and
Victor, bishop of Tunon (6). Furthermore, these six au-
thors tell us that the martyrs proceeded to Constantinople,
where the Emperor Zeno attested the prodigy. Four of these
authors say that they examined the mouths of the victims,,
and that they heard them talk. It is useless to object that,
perhaps the entire tongues were not cut out (7) ; and that

(1) History of the Vandalic Persecution , Bk. v.

(-) Code. r, Bk. 1., tit. 27.

(3) Dialogue “ Theophrastes" (4) War Against the Vandals , Bk. i„ cb. 8.

(5) Chronicle.

(6) Ihid. /

(7) Thus urges the English translator of Moshelm.

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the “ Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences ” of Paris make
mention of two persons who had no tongues, but neverthe-
less could talk. In these latter cases there were remaining
small portions of the original tongues ; and even w'ith those
portions, as the examining surgeons reported, the unfortu-
nates could talk only with very great effort, and their utter-
ances were unintelligible articulations rather than compre-
hensible words. On the other hand, an inspection of the
mouths of the martyrs of Typasis revealed not a vestige of
tongue, and the emitted tones were precisely such as would
have been produced by organs in normal condition. Now, if
four eye-witnesses, men respectable by their worldly rank
and by their learning and probity of life, do not form good
historical testimony, we know not where to find any. Let
the reader apply the criterions insisted upon by Hume and
Huxley to the testimony in favor of this miracle. He will
find that it will stand the test. Our witnesses could not
have conspired to palm off an impudent fraud upon a credu-
lous world ; for some of them wrote in Africa, and others in
Constantinople. And mark that they all agree in the sub-
stance of their narratives, while their simplicity and positive-
ness are indicative of sincerity.

The narrative for which we now ask attention concerns
St Martin of Tours. It is related by Sulpicius Severus, a
writer with whom the learned among our opponents are well
acquainted, and whom they esteem as a reliable authority,
whenever their preconceptions do not interfere with their
vanity of judgment. One day it happened that while St.
Martin was walking in the neighborhood of Chartres, a weep-
ing father besought him to give speech to his daughter, who
had been mute from her birth. By the powrer of God the
: saint complied w ith the request ; and one Evagrius, a priest
who witnessed the event, related it to Severus, who recorded
it in his book. Here is an author who is not only contem-
porary With the subject of his story, but who knew him well,
who lived long among the disciples of the saint, and heard
their testimony concerning the prodigies performed by him,
and whom, therefore, we must suppose to have been well
equipped for the work of preparing an accurate account of

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THE PLACE OF THE MIRACULOUS IN HISTORY. 453

the life and deeds of the great prelate. His book, multiplied
into thousands of copies while he yet lived, has come down,
to us intact, and with as sure guarantees of authenticity as
is possessed by any ancient manuscript There is still pre-
served in Verona a copy which was contemporary with Siil-
picius, an exceptional case in the matter of a work of the*
fourth century. Now, according to all the rules of ordinarily
sound criticism, the narrative of Sulpicius Severus concern-
ing the adduced miracle by St. Martin of Tours ought to in-
spire confidence in the credibility of that prodigy. But our
Rationalistic friends will not view the matter in this light.
With a contemptuous shrug they dismiss both the well-
attested miracle of St. Martin and the equally well-proved
prodigy which occurred among the Vandals. And why ?
Merely because they are presented as miracles. We are
told that rules of criticism do not exist for such narratives*
In fine, the results of an investigation which has been con-
ducted in scrupulous accordance with canons adopted and
consecrated by these same devotees of “ pure reason ” and
of “scientific criticism ” must go for nothing whenever those
results contradict the Rationalistic manner of thought on
the Deity, on the soul’s immortality, or, for that matter,
on anything else. And this is the same as saying that in-
credulist criticism diametrically reverses the position which
criticism ought to occupy. Criticism should lead us to a
knowledge of the truth. That which one may happen to
regard as truth before any preliminary examination has
been held, should not impose its limitations upon criticism.
Why will not our Rationalistic critics be content with treat-
ing an alleged miracle as they would any other alleged fact ?
Why not subject it to the same verifying process ? When
the alleged miraculous appears on the pages of history, let
all sincere critics pronounce judgment on it, with eyes direct-
ed simply on the question of fact, without any preliminary
reflections, direct or indirect, upon even the existence of the*
supernatural. There will be sufficient time afterward to
decide whether the event must be regarded in a natural or
supernatural light. We ask for no more than this ; and:
this is mere justice, plain common-sense.

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We can scarcely believe that atheistical and Protestant
critics will ever adopt this course. It is much more easy to
settle every question as to the truth of an alleged miracle
with a smart sally of words, — with a feeble attempt at a joke.
Mayhap such conduct is prudent ; for the frivolous travesties
of ratiocination generally presented by the giants of agnostic
criticism can not* withstand the shock of the evidence winch
leads the Roman Congregation of Rites to proclaim the
miraculous nature of a given occurrence. When Joseph II.,
the philosophistic German emperor and “ sacristy-sweep,”
visited the Eternal City during the Conclave of 1769 which
resulted in the election of Pope Clement XIV., he had re-
solved, .like a true philosophist, to ridicule every thing papal ;
and among other enterprises, he sought to belittle the pre-
cautions taken by the Sacred Congregation in cases of
canonization. Having requested to be allowed to examine
some evidence regarding an alleged miracle then being con-
sidered by the tribunal, he obtained it, and taking it home?
he subjected it to a hypercritically thorough investigation.
The result was not what the pupil of Kaunitz had fondly
anticipated ; and he was constrained to remark, when return-
ing the documents, that if all the testimony favoring the
truth of “ Roman miracles ” were as conclusive as that which
he had just weighed in his Rationalistic balance, no sane
jurist would reject it. Judge of the emperor’s consternation
when he learned that the Congregation of Rites had rejected
as insufficient the evidence which he had deemed satisfactory.
We do not know whether Joseph II. again feigned to contemn
Roman views of the miraculous ; but we do know that if our
contemporaries of the pretendedly scientific school of his-
torical criticism were to peruse the documents just mentioned*
they would simply resort to ridicule. With the rank and
file of men, ridicule succeeds where reason would fail. Few
men are capable of sustaining the painful march of argumen-
tation ; and still smaller is the number of those who are
above being influenced by a display of some verbal scintilla-
tions which pass for wit. Even educated and thinking
persons not unfrequently succumb to raillery, and prefer a
specious vivacity to unadulterated truth.

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THE MIRACLES OF LOURDES.

Commenting on the assertion, so often made by heterodox
polemics, that if mathematical certainty could be predicated
of even one of the many miracles which the Church indi-
cates as forming one of her constant and necessary treasures,
the entire world would probably be converted, Leon Gautier
thus speaks of the entrancing but calmly critical book (1)
which Henri Lasserre presented to Our Lady of Lourdes
as an ex-voto in grateful recognition of a cure which he him-
self had received at her hands : “ Henri Lasserre has fur-
nished us with the proof of this one miracle, chosen from
among thousands. He has obstinately confined himself to
one fact, closing his eyes to thousands of other splendors, in
order to contemplate one alone. He has had sufficient pa-
tience to study only one star in a heaven studded with so many
constellations ; but who knows that star so well as he knows
it, and who has revealed it so wrell to men ? In Oar Lady of
Lourdes you will not discern any of those honeyed phrases
which are so characteristic of the false mysticism of our day ;
this work cannot be styled ‘ a good little book ’ ; it is nervous
and virile, and it will make men ; every thing in it is strong,
and above all, everything is demonstrated. Lasserre is a
judge, and not a narrator ; he is a magistrate pronouncing
from his tribunal a decision which is based on good reasons
which have been duly weighed. His book is a scientific
production ; it is a series of theorems which are endowed
with splendid form ” (2). This one miracle which claimed
the attention of Lasserre as though he had determined to
satisfy the affectedly modest demand of heterodoxy — the
one fact which, if proved to have been the effect of a real
miracle, was supposedly to be pronounced a sufficient reason
for the conversion of the sceptical world, was “ the incessant
procession of pilgrims — men, women, entire populations —

(1) Our Lady of Lourdes. Parte. 1809.

ft) Portraits of the Nineteenth Century , Vol ill., p. 210. Parte, 1894.

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coming from all sides to kneel before a grotto in the desert
■ which had been unknown ten years previously, but which
the word of a child had suddenly caused to be regarded as
a divine sanctuary.” Before the inception of his investi-
gation, Lasserre had felt that the word “ superstition ” was
rather unsatisfactory as an accompaniment to the scoff of the
incredulists at the most wonderful phenomenon of the grand
nineteenth century ; the mouthing of that word, albeit an
expeditious proceeding, was not to his taste : “ Whether the
miracle (of the apparitions to little Bernadette) was true or
false ; whether the cause of this vast concourse of persons was
due to the divine action or to human error ; a study of the mat-
ter was no less of consummate interest. This study did not
at all suit the worshippers of 4 free investigation * ; they pre-
ferred a summary dismissal, a course at once more prudent
and more easy, but which I could not regard as consistent
with a zealous search for the truth, although I felt that it
was risky to affirm with a haste equal to that of their
denial. . . . The witnesses of what I have narrated are living ;
I have given their names and their residences, so that they
may be questioned, and so that my own conclusions may be
confirmed.” The Church has as yet accorded no formal ad-
mission of the miraculous nature of the prodigies of Lourdes ;
just as in the cases of those which have rendered celebrated,
although to a minor degree, the shrines of Genazzano, La
Salette, St. Anne de Beaupre, and several others, we are not
obliged to predicate anything worse than rashness and
absence of common sense concerning the infinitesimally
small number of Catholics who, after a study of the events
which have recently conferred a halo of glory on the little
Pyrenean town, persist in regarding it as a monument to
human credulity. To those who have carefully reflected on
the arguments adduced by Lasserre there can occur no good
reason for hesitation in agreeing with Pope Pius IX., when,
in an apposite Brief to the zealous but judicious Frenchman,
His Holiness congratulated him on “ having demonstrated
the truth of the recent apparition of the Most Clement
Mother of God,” and on having so adduced his proofs, that
“ the luminous evidence of the event is strengthened by the

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very objections advanced by human malice as it attempts to
combat the divine mercy.”

On Feb. 11, 1858, a girl of fourteen years named Berna-
dette Soubirous, accompanied by a younger sister and a lit-
tle friend, left her home in Lourdes in order to search for
drift-wood on the banks of the Gave. When a mere infant,
Bernadette had been consigned to the care of a relative of
her father, the poverty of the family rendering such a course
necessary, and the health of the child demanding a life in
the fields. She had returned to her parents’ humble domi-
cile only two weeks before the day when their persistent
poverty forced her to seek for fuel with which the simple
food of the family might be prepared. During the years of
absence, her guardians had given no care to her religious
instruction ; she had, however, picked up that quantum of
knowledge which is necessarily breathed in every Catho-
lic atmosphere, and she was able to recite her Rosary with
simple faith in the existence of a God who was her Creator
and Protector, and of a Dear Lady in heaven who was the
Mother of God, and wished to be the adopted Mother of
every child of man. It was in order to procure for their
daughter all necessary catechetical instruction, so that she
might receive her First Communion, that the Soubirous had
taken her home ; she had already joined a class under the
care of the pastor, but had not as yet attracted the attention
of that clergyman. The Rosary had been continually in the
hands of Bernadette, since the day when she had learned to
regard it as a dear companion while she tended the sheep
of her foster-parents ; and when, on the occasion of which
we speak, the trio of girls had arrived at the Massabielle
Rocks, where they expected to find many branches and twigs
which had drifted with the current, her companions were
not astonished when they noticed that instead of bending to
her task, she had fallen to her knees, seemingly forgetful
of the purpose that had brought them to the river. The
drama of Lourdes had begun. The sister and the friend of
Bernadette had formed their little bundles, when they were
approached by the apparently negligent child, who seemed
to be strangely agitated as she demanded : “ Did you see=

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anything?” Learning that the others had heard or seen
nothing worthy of mention, she replied to the query as to
her own experience with the words : “ If you saw nothing
I have nothing to say.” Then the children started on their
return ; but the strange demeanor of the eldest excited the
curiosity of the others , to such a pitch that at length, with
many injunctions of secrecy, she narrated what had befallen
her. Standing above the grotto before which her sister,
Marie, and their little friend, Jeanne, were gathering fuel, a
beautiful lady had appeared to Bernadette. The personage,
declared the child, was surrounded by an ineffable light — a
light which was brighter than that of the sun, but which in
no manner wounded the eyes. The apparition was that of a
person about twenty years old, of medium height, and with
a countenance of inexpressible sweetness ; the figure was
clothed in white, with a blue girdle, and the feet were bare,
each one supporting a rose which seemed to be of gold ; the
hands of the lady were joined, as though she were praying,
and from them a Eosary showed beads of a milk-white color.
Bernadette said that when she first saw the lady, she in-
stinctively raised the cross of her chaplet, trying to make
with it the Sign of our Eedemption ; that, however, her
trembling prevented the action ; and -that it was only when
her visitor made the salutary sign, that she received suf-
ficient strength to make it. Then, added Bernadette, she
felt no more fear ; she recited the five decades of her Eosary 9
and as she pronounced the final “Glory to the Father,” the
luminous figure vanished. Marie and Jeanne afterward de-
clared that they had passed about fifteen minutes at their
task while Bernadette was apparently wrapped in devotion ;
and this fact, together with the assertion of the favored child
that she had recited five decades of the chaplet during her
vision, would indicate that about fifteen minutes was the dur-
ation of the apparition. It is needless to state that Marie
and Jeanne forgot their promise of secrecy ; that they in-
formed Mother Soubirous of the event, real or imaginary ;
and that the story was ridiculed, while they were forbidden
to revisit the grotto. Two days passed, and Bernadette,
Avhose recollection of “ the beautiful lady ” continually filled

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her heart, begged her mother to withdraw the prohibition.
The ojfcher girls supported the request ; the mother yielded ;
and after the early Mass the little ones again repaired to the
Massabielle Rocks, taking the precaution, however, to carry
with them a bottle of Holy Water, for, as Mary and Jeanne
declared with their relatively superior theological knowledge :
If the lady is the devil, she will flee if we throw the
Holy Water on her ; we need only say : 4 If you come from
God, approach ; if you are from the demon, depart ! * ” When
they arrived at the grotto, Bernadette began the recitation
of the Rosary, the others responding. Suddenly the coun-
tenance of Bernadette seemed to be transfigured ; her eyes
gave forth a preternatural light, as she cried : “ Look ! She
is there ! ” Marie and Jeanne saw nothing but the usual
rocks and verdure ; but the bearer of the salutary water hand-
ed it to Bernadette, who quickly threw some drops on the
figure, saying : 44 If you come from God, approach ! ” She
cared not, she afterward said, to add the alternative words of
the objurgatory formula ; for her heart told her that the im-
plied suspicion would have been an outrage on the 44 beautiful
lady.” And indeed, declared Bernadette, she had no sooner
spoken to the apparition than it moved a few steps toward her,
smiling, as it were, at the precaution of the child. Then the
children concluded their Rosary, the 44 lady,” insisted Ber-
nadette, appearing to join with them, for, as the girl said,
^he saw the beads gliding through the fingers of the appari-
tion, just as they passed through her own. When the
devotion was completed, the 44 lady ” disappeared. As on
4he previous occasion, Marie and Jeanne had seen nothing
of the vision. It was quite natural that this strange story
should have soon become known in the town; and while
nearly all agreed with the Soubirous that their child was the
victim of an hallucination, all were struck by the evident
sincerity 6f the visionary, and by the wonderful change in
her appearance and demeanor. Two of the townswomen, a
44 Child of Mary ” named Antoinette Peyret, and a matron
named Millet, believed that the apparition might be that of
some suffering soul of Purgatory who was desirous of prayers
jfor deliverance ; and accordingly they told Bernadette that

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when she next saw the “ lady,” she should ask her what it
was that was Wanted, and that, lest Bernadette might make
some mistake in reporting the answer, the “ lady ” should be
requested to write her reply on a paper which the child
would hand her. Bernadette, therefore, accompanied by
Mile. Antoinette and Mme. Millet, went to the grotto on Feb-
ruary 18 ; the “ lady ” again appeared, the child’s visage
being transfigured as before, but her companions seeing or
hearing nothing else which was preternatural. “ She signs-
to me that I should go to her,” cried Bernadette. Then
Antoinette said to the girl : “ Ask the lady whether she is
displeased because we are with you ; tell her that if she so
desires, we shall retire.” And Bernadette replied : “ She
says that you may remain ;” whereupon the Child of Mary
and the matron knelt on the sward at the side of Bernadette,
and lighting a blessed candle which they had deemed it wise
to bring, they told her to obey the sign to approach which
the apparition had given. “ Ask her who she is,” they sug-
gested ; “ ask her why she has come, and whether she is not
some soul desiring that Masses be said for her deliverance
from Purgatory. We are ready to do all that she may desire,
if that be the case.” Receiving from Antoinette the paper,
pen, and ink, with which the “ lady ” was to make known
her identity and her wishes, the child advanced toward the
mysterious figure, a maternal smile seeming to encourage
her steps. But the apparition receded as Bernadette prog-
ressed ; it did not stop until it reached the entrance to the
grotto, and then the little one stood on her toes, as though
she were trying to place the writing materials in the hands
of the “ lady.” The matron and the maiden now stepped
forward, wishing to hear a possible conversation ; but the
child, without turning toward them, and as though she was
obeying a command of her visitor, signed with her hand
that they should move no further. Then the favored girl
was heard to say : “ My lady, if you have something to tell
me, please write it down, and tell me also who you are.”
Bernadette afterward said that the “ lady ” smiled at this
request, and replied : “ It is not necessary that I should
write what I intend to tell you ; and I simply ask that you

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do me the favor of coming here each day during the next
fortnight.” And the reply was cheerfully given : “ I promise,
my lady ; ” whereupon, as Bernadette afterward said,* she re-
ceived the assurance : “ And in my turn I promise to render you
happy, not in this world, but in the other.” Evidently the
“ lady ” now told Bernadette that she might withdraw ; for
the child backed toward her companions, and as she reached
them she exclaimed to Antoinette, the Child of Mary :
“ Now she is smiling on you ” ; and Lasserre is careful to
note that from that moment Antoinette lived on that smile.
“ Ask her,” cried the maiden, “ whether it would displease
her if we were to accompany you in your daily visits during
the coming fortnight.” A pause ; and then Bernadette
announced that the “ lady ” had replied : “ They, and others
also, may come ; I wish to see everybody.” Another
moment ; and the child declared that the “ lady ” had gone,
and with her the light that had always announced her
coming. Thousands of persons, some merely curious, but
many filled with the spirit of faith, came from the neighbor-
ing districts and attended the little Bernadette as she made
her visits to the grotto during the two following weeks.
None saw anything but a child in ecstasy ; a few were dis-
posed to regard the matter as a comedy arranged by priest-
craft; others saw, or affected to see in Bernadette an
illustration of the power of hallucination. The hypothesis
of trickery was not long sustained ; good judges, who had
seen the best efforts of the most eminent actresses of the
world, declared that human art could not produce such
manifestations as those presented by this ignorant and
stolid peasant girl. But the supposition of hallucination,
of catalepsy, was a simple method of explanation adopted
by the philosopliists who soon came from all parts of France
to pronounce their dictum concerning the “ visionary ” of
Lourdes. Meanwhile the clergy of the locality, realizing
full well that while God has His miracles, nevertheless the
devil has his prodigies, and man has his impostures, fol-
lowed the course which is traditional with their order in sira-
iliar circumstances. An appreciation of their attitude must
result from reflection on the instruction given to his assist-

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ants by the Abbe Peyramale, the senior cure of the town
and Canton of Lourdes : “ Let the impatient have their talk.
If on the one hand we are strictly obliged to examine
thoroughly the affair which is now progressing, on the
other hand we are enjoined by the simplest kind of prudence
not to mingle with the crowd now singing its canticles at
the grotto. By holding aloof from these assemblages we
will run no danger of sanctioning an illusion or a trick by
our presence ; but neither should we manifest a hostile
attitude, or condemn by a premature decision a thing which
may be the work of God. As for attending these demon-
strations as simple spectators, such a proceeding would be
impossible to persons wearing the soutane. If the people
saw a priest at the grotto, they would place him at their
head, and insist on his intoning their chants ; and if he
were to yield to the general pressure or to his own unreflect-
ing enthusiasm, and were afterward to discover that the
alleged apparitions were illusions or impostures, who does
not see that religion would be compromised in the persons
of its clergy ? And if a priest were to frequent the grotto,
and nevertheless resist the popular clamor, would not the
same lamentable consequences follow, if perchance the hand
of God were found to have been in the apparitions ? ” And
when many pious persons insisted on his change of front,
the cure replied : “ We clergymen can interfere only if there
should result from this excitement some heresy, some
superstition, or some disturbance ; then our duty would be
marked out by the facts themselves, for by bad fruit we
would recognize a bad tree, and we would perforce attend to-
the first symptom of disease in order to save our flocks.
Up to the present moment no danger has presented itself ;
on the contrary, the people have shown a spirit of recollec-
tion, and are content with prayers to the Holy Virgin, thus
increasing in piety. We may well wait for the decision
which episcopal wisdom will soon pronounce on this matter.
If these events are the work of God, they need not our
interference ; and the Omnipotent, without our help, will
know how to arrange affairs in accordance with His designs.
But if these events are not from God, the moment when we

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should interfere, in order to denounce them, will be desig-
nated by Him. In a word, let us trust in Providence.”
Mgr. Laurence, the bishop of Tarbes, and therefore ordinary
of Lourdes, approved the instruction given by the cure-doyen ;
and without a single exception the clergy checked their
own possibly legitimate desire to share in the pious
demonstrations of their flocks before competent ecclesias-
tical authority had spoken the permissive word. The
attitude of the civil authorities, however, was less sensible
than that of the clergy. The Second Empire, almost as
entirely a child of the Revolution as the Third Republic
which succeeded it, was far more Masonic than Christian
in the choice of its governmental servants ; and these
gentry, since they were loud praters concerning liberty of
conscience, declared that civilization was outraged by a
claim that a miracle had occurred in the nineteenth century,
and that in any case the Catholic people of France had no
right to pray without governmental permission. On Feb. 21,
the third day of the fortnight of interviews described by her
“lady,” when the apparition had particularly enjoined upon
Bernadette to “ pray for sinners,” the child was arrested “ in
the name of the law” as she was leaving the church where she
had assisted at Vespers. A thrill of indignation coursed
through the veins of nearly all those who had that morning seen
the visage of the little one illumined by what they deemed to
be rays of heavenly origin ; and they would have resisted the
officers, had not a priest ordered them to “ submit to the
authorities.” The multitude accompanied the child to the
office of the Commissioner of Police ; but the first great
ordeal of the innocent was undergone behind closed doors.
The official report of the interrogatory, sent by the Com-
missioner, Jacomet, to his superiors in Paris, was refused
to Lasserre, so anxious were the Masonic agents of the gov-
ernment for a triumph of truth ; but from M. Estrade, the
local Receiver of the Indirect Taxes, whom Jacomet had
allowed to assist at the examination, and who shared the
views of the Commissioner, our author afterward obtained
all the particulars. All the cunning of an experienced and
more than usually brilliant detective, all the malice of an

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Adept of the Lodges, had not succeeded in confounding the
simplicity of Bernadette ; even when the officer, affecting
furious anger, termed her a liar, and menaced her with im-
prisonment, the child had calmly answered: “Monsieur,
you may order the police to lock me up, but 1 can say only
what I have said ; it is the truth ” (1). On receiving a com-
mand to abstain from future visits to the grotto, she had
replied that she had promised the “ lady ” to repair thither
every day for a fortnight, and that even though she might
wish to obey the Commissioner, an interior force would
induce her to prefer obedience to the apparition. The result
of the examination had been an order to Francois Soubirous
to prevent his daughter from re-visiting the grotto. “ She
is a cunning child,” Jacomet had remarked when Bernadette
had departed. “She is sincere,” Estrade had replied.
Out of obedience to her father, who believed in the truth of
the apparition, but who greatly feared the more tangible pow-
<er of the government, Bernadette now endeavored “ to resist
the attraction toward the grotto which possessed her”; and
on the morning of Feb. 23, she proceeded to school, sore at
heart, feeling that she would displease God, whether she dis-
obeyed her “ lady ” or disobeyed her parents. She received,
of course, no consolation from the Sisters of the school, who
believed, or affected to believe, that she was a victim of hal-
lucination. But when the mid-day A ngelus had been recited,
and the pupils started for their dinners, the quandary of
the little one was dissipated by a force, irresistible although
maternally sweet, which impelled her to an interview with
her whom she regarded as her Protectress. Hastening to the
grotto, where some of the crowd of the morning still awaited
her appearance, hoping that she would defy the Commis-
sioner’s prohibition, Bernadette as usual knelt and began her
Bosary ; but alas ! her “ lady ” did not appear. The tears ran

(1) Estrade Informed Lasserre that personally Bernadette was timidity itself, as might
have been expected in the case of an ignorant peasant girl confronted by the dread
powers of the police. Indeed, at this period of her life the child was always more or less
confused in the presence of any stranger. But whenever there was a question of the
reality of her vision, the girl manifested a strength of mind seldom found in persons wise
with the wisdom of the world ; and on such occasions she always replied without any
indication of timidity, and with invincible firmness, although, even then, she showed the
-virginal modesty which leads its possessor to avoid the notice of the curious.

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down her cheeks as she exclaimed : “ Have I done something
wrong, and thus prevented her coming ?” She waited in
painful anxiety for some moments, and then turned toward
her home, many of the spectators declaring that the Commis-
sioner had gained his point — that the foolish child would have
no more visions. But one joy was hers when she appeared
before her father ; when he heard that she had disregarded
his command because she was impelled by an interior and un-
conquerable force, hedeclared that his daughter had never
told a lie, and that it was not for him or her mother to contra-
dict the will of God. Bernadette might go to the grotto
whenever she desired to go. In vain Jacomet now threatened
to imprison the entire Soubirous family, if his orders were
again violated ; Bernadette innocently declared that she could
not disobey her “ lady,” and both the parents upheld her de-
termination. In this emergency the Commissioner sent a
report of his predicament to the imperial Procurator of the
Department ; and that wise official replied that there was
no pretext for police interference unless the crowds be-
came “ disorderly ” — a view which encouraged an officer of a
body which knew well how to manufacture disorder for
its own purposes. On the morning after her bitter disap-
pointment, Bernadette prostrated herself again before the
grotto, holding a blessed candle in the hand which was not
occupied with the Bosary ; and scarcely had her knees pressed
the ground, when the ineffable expression of her countenance
showed the bystanders that she was again in communion with
her mysterious visitant. As the girl afterward swore in
her 'declarations, the “ lady ” sweetly called her by name,
And then said : “ My child, I have something to tell you, and
to you alone ; do you promise me that you willrepeat it to
no one?” (1). When the promise had been given, the

(1) Concerning this secret, Lasserre asks : ** What secret could there be between the
Mother of the Sovereign Creator of heaven and earth and the daughter of the miller Sou-
birous; between that lowly child and the resplendent Majesty of her who ranks after God
alone ; between a little shepherdess and the Supreme Queen of the realms of the Infinite ?
Certainly we dare not divine it, we would consider it a sacrilege to listen at the doors of
heaven. Nevertheless, we may note the profound and delicate knowledge of the human
heart and the maternal wisdom which induced the august speaker to communicate some
secret to Bernadette, before she conferred the public mission that the girl was to fulfil.
Favored with wonderful visions, charged with a message from the other world to the
priests of the True God, this childish heart, hitherto so peaceful and so solitary, found itself

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“lady” communicated to her protegee that secret which
Bernadette would never divulge ; and then she said : “ Go now
and tell the priests that I desire that a chapel be built hero
in my honor.” The vision disappeared, and paying no
heed to the questions of the crowd, the most favored of all
the Children of Mary of our day hurried to the residence
of the Abbe Peyramale, with whom as yet she had not ex-
changed a word. “ M . le Cure , I have a message for you
from the lady who appears to me at the grotto of Massabielle.'
When the worthy pastor heard this announcement, delivered
with calm assurance, he deemed it wise to feign some rough-
ness of manner, and said : “ Ah ! you are the one that pre-
tends to have visions, and who runs around the country with
foolish tales. Well ; tell me all about these extraordinary
adventures, the truth of which nothing seems to prove.” The
heart of the child sank a little as she heard the harsh tones
of one w ho was celebrated for his kindness to the lowliest of
his parishioners ; but in all simplicity she repeated the story
of the grotto. The accents of sincerity impressed the priest,,
and as he afterward said, had there been merely a question
of the opinion of Monsieur Peyramale, he would have yielded
full credence to Bernadette ; but the girl was addressing the

suddenly in the midst of dense crowds, and subjected to great agitations. She was about
to be contradicted by many, to be threatened by some, to be ridiculed by others ; and wbat
was to be most dangerous for her, to be venerated by a large number. The day was
approaching when multitudes would acclaim her, and dispute among themselves for bits of
her clothes as though they were relics of a saint ; when illustrious persons would kneel before
her, and ask for her blessing ; when on the faith of her simple word a magnificent temple
was to be erected, imposing pilgrimages to be undertaken, and grand processions to be
held. Thus this poor child of the people was about to suffer the most terrible trial which
could assail her humility, a trial in which she might lose forever her simplicity and all
the sweet and modest virtues which had grown in the days of her solitude. The very
graces which she had received were about to be for her a redoubtable danger, a danger
which more than once has conquered souls favored by the honors of heaven. Even St.
Paul was tempted by pride after his visions, and had need of the afflictions which came
from the evil spirit of the flesh in order that his heart might not be exalted. The Holy
Virgin wished to secure the child of her predilection without any approach, on the part of
the wicked angel, toward the lily of purity which was warmed by the rays of her favor.
What does a mother do, when danger menaces her child ? She presses her more tenderly
to the maternal bosom, and softly whispers in the little ear that there is no need for fear,
since the mother is near. And when the mother is forced to leave the child alone for a
moment, she murmurs : ‘ I shall not be far awnv ; only extend your hand, and it will meet
mine., So did the Mother of us all for Bernadette. All this did the Queen of Heaven to

the little child of Lonrdes when she told her that secret The secret became for

Bernadette the surest of safeguards. Theology does not teach us this ; we learu it from
a st dy of the human heart.”

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Abbe Peyramale, the pastor of a large flock which he was
obliged to guard from snares. He persevered with his rough
demeanor, and asked : “ And yet you do not know the name
of this lady ? ” And when the child replied that she had
not yet learned the name, the priest said : “ Those who be-
lieve you imagine that she is the Blessed Virgin Mary*
But do you not know that if you tell untruths in this matter,
you are in the path which leads far from heaven ? ” After
a few moments of reflection, the abbe continued : “ Nothing
compels me to believe that this lady is the Queen of Heaven*
Tell her that before I can undertake to procure the fulfilment
of her request, she must give me some proof of her power.”
Again he mused awhile, and then he said : “ You tell me
that the apparition has at her feet a wild rose-bush, an eg-
lantine which grows from between the rocks. Well ; we are
now in the month of February, and you may say to the lady
that if she wants that chapel, she will cause that bush to
flower.” When Jacomet and the other incredulists of
Lourdes heard of this interview, they said that the abbe had
asked the mysterious lady for her “ passport.” Estrade, the
incredulist collector of taxes whom we have heard avowing
that Bernadette impressed him as being at least sincere i&
her belief in the vision, was one of the curious who joined
the throng of devotees on the morning after the child’s^
delivery of the message to the cure ; and it may be well to
let him give his own account of what he saw, and of the effect
that the spectacle produced on his deeply rooted infidelity.
His remarks were first published by Louis Veuillot in the
Univers of July 28, 1858, and afterward he himself amplified
the narrative for the benefit of Lasserre : “ I arrived on the
scene, bent on having a good laugh at a farce or at soma
grotesque incidents. . . . Thanks to my elbows, I easily ob-
tained a place in the foremost rank. As the sun arose, Ber-
nadette appeared. I was next to her ; and I noticed in her
childish features that character of sweetness, of innocence,
and of deep tranquillity, which had impressed me when I
saw her at the office of the Commissioner. She knelt with-
out any ostentation or embarrassment, without any attention
to the crowd, absolutely as though she were alone in a church

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or in an unfrequented forest. She began to pray on her
Rosary, and suddenly her features seemed to receive and to
reflect a mysterious light ; her looks became fixed on the
opening of the grotto, and she became radiant with happiness.
I looked at that spot, but I discerned absolutely nothing but
tjome leafless branches of eglantine ; but nevertheless, all my
previous prejudices, all my philosophical objections, all
my preconceived negations, were immediately destroyed as
I looked on the transfigure ment of that child, and I felt that
in spite of myself some extraordinary sentiment had mastered
me. I had an irresistible intuition, a certainty, that some
mysterious Being was there ; my eyes did not see it, but my
soul, as well as the souls of innumerable others there present,
saw it with the light of evidence. Yes, I avow it ; a Divine
Being was there. Suddenly and completely transfigured,
Bernadette was no longer Bernadette ; she was an angel from
heaven. . . . Her attitude, her slightest gestures, the manner,
for instance, in which she made the Sign of the Cross ; all
these had a dignity and a graudeur more than human. . . . She
•seemed to fear, lest she might lose, for a single instant, the
ravishing spectacle that she was contemplating. ... I held
my breath, as though I might thus hear the conversation
between the apparition and the girl. Bernadette was listen-
ing with an expression of the most profound respect, or
rather of absolute adoration, mingled with a limitless love
and the sweetest of ravishments, although at times a tinge of
sadness was observed. ... If the denizens of heaven make the
Sign of the Cross, assuredly they make it as Bernadette did
•during her ecstasy ; she seemed, in some sort, to embrace
the Infinite. At one moment, she moved on her knees from
where she had been praying to some distance within the
grotto — about ten yards of a rather steep ascent ; and those
near her distinctly heard her murmur : ‘ Penance, penance ! ’
A few moments afterward she arose, and took the road to
the town. Then again she was but a poor little child in rags
who appeared to have had no part in this wonderful drama.”
Bernadette immediately visited the cure, telling him that she
had given his message to the “ lady,” and that the reply had
been a smile. “ Then,” added the child, “ she told me to

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pray for sinners, and asked me to enter the grotto. Three
times she cried : ‘ Penance, penance ! ’ ; and I repeated the
words as I moved on my knees toward her. In the grotto*
she revealed to me a second secret which is personal to*
myself. Then she vanished.” When Bernadette prostrated
herself at the grotto on the following day, the “ lady ” raised
her and embraced her, saying : “ My daughter, I wish to-
confide to you a third secret which, like the others, you will
keep to yourself.” Then the apparition told the child to go
to the spring and drink, and to eat some of the grass there
growing. No one had ever seen a spring in the neighbor-
hood, and it seemed to Bernadette that her visitor meant the
little brook which coursed before the grotto op its way to
the Gave. But the mysterious one cried : “ I told you to*
drink from the spring. It is not there, but here ” ; and the
“ lady ” pointed toward the dry spot at the right side of the
grotto, toward which the child had gone on her knees on the
previous day. Wondering but promptly the girl went to the
place, but found no indication of a spring ; whereupon the
“ lady ” made a sign that the clay should be scraped. The
hundreds of spectators were truly puzzled when they
witnessed this operation, and many began to suspect that
the child’s brain had become affected by the strain of her ex-
periences. Their wonder grew when they saw her apparently
drinking from the palm of her hand, for they knew that water
had never been seen in that place. Afterward Bernadette
said that when she had scraped the earth, she noticed that
the spot appeared to be damp ; that in a moment some drops
of water oozed forth ; that then she formed a little cavity,
and that soon it was filled with the fluid ; that although tho
water naturally was muddy, after three trials she conquered
her repugnance out of love for her “ lady,” and swallowed
some of it ; that while she was eating some of the grass, the
minute reservoir which she had dug was overflowed, and a little
stream began its flow toward the Gave ; that finally the ap-
parition beamed on her with a smile of satisfaction, and dis-
appeared. When the girl had come out of her ecstasy, the
crowd rushed to the new fountain, and found that it was
continually growing more abundant ; regarding it as mirao-

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ulous, they drank of it, atid many carried some of it to their
homes. The news travelled quickly; and as that day, Feb.
25, a Thursday, was market-day in Tarbes, the city was well
filled with strangers. Hundreds of persons therefore left
Tarbes during the night, in order to be present at the events
which the next morning would probably bring forth at the
grotto of Lourdes ; and at the first dawn of Feb. 26, more
than five thousand aoclaimants greeted Bernadette with
<u*ies such as “ See the saint ! ” while the nearest to her rev-
erently touched her garments as she passed to her accus-
tomed station. But the more devout, and especially the
more perspicacious of the Catholic spectators, were not sur-
prised when, after the popular attempt at canonization, the
innocent subject of the honor seemed to have lost her con-
nection with the world of heaven. On that morning the
child appeared to be no more than any ordinary denizen of
earth ; no ecstatic radiance was visible on her countenance ;
and after the usual recitation of her Rosary, she announced
that her “ lady ” had not manifested herself. Undoubtedly,
remarked those who were versed in the science of God’s
dealings with the children of grace, the sweet Mother of the
humble had deigned to remove a temptation to vain-glory
from the daughter of her predilection. But when the mul-
titude returned to Lourdes, they learned that strange rumors
were current concerning some wonderful cures which had
been operated by the use of the recently revealed water ;
and the ensuing days beheld a multiplication of these ap-
parent instances of divine approbation of the claims of la
voyante People talked of how the hand of Jeanne Crassus,
paralyzed for ten years, had immediately recovered its vital-
ity when bathed with the water of the new spring. Cures
had also been effected, it was said, in the cases of Marie
Daube, Bernarde Soubie, and Fabien Baron, whom various
maladies had rendered bedridden for several years. The
most remarkable of the cures, because its subject had been
deeply pitied in all that part of France for twenty years, was
Louis Bourriette, a poor man who, while working in a quarry
in 1838, had been a victim of an explosion which almost en-
tirely destroyed the sight of his right eye, and so undermined

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his constitution that he could never afterward work more
than sufficiently to barely sustain his life, and that of a
daughter. At the time of which we are speaking, when
Boiirriette closed his left eye, he could not distinguish a
man from a bush ; and it was greatly feared that the sound
organ would soon be affected in a similar manner. The
poor man heard of the supposedly miraculous virtues of the
new spring, and he asked his daughter to bring him some of
the water. “ If the Holy Virgin is the author of that spring,”
said he, “ she will restore my sight.” The water was brought ;
raising his heart to God, and imploring the intercession of
Mary, the suppliant bathed his eye, and immediately he
could distinguish objects with considerable clearness ; he con-
tinued the application at intervals until the following morn-
ing, when he announced to his physician, Dr. Dozous, who
had attended him from the day of the accident, that his sight
was perfect. The medical man, who had hitherto believed
in little save human science, shrugged his shoulders, and
told his patient that the diseased eye could never regain its
powers ; that all of the doctor’s care had been extended
merely in order to assuage Bourriette’s pain. “ But I do
not say that you have cured me,” cried the exultant one ; “ it
is the Holy Virgin of the Grotto that has cured me.” Doz-
ous having persisted in his incredulity, and Bourriette hav-
ing reiterated his declaration that he saw well with his right
eye, the physician quietly tore a leaf from his pocket-diary,
and having written a few words thereon, he handed the paper
to the obstinate man, telling him to close his left eye, and
to repeat what had been written. “ If you do,” proclaimed
Dozous, I shall believe what you have said.” Bourriette
looked with his right eye alone at the paper, and im-
mediately read aloud : “ Bourriette has an incurable amau-
rosis jha will never be cured.” Then the physician announced
that however he himself and his brethren of the Faculty
might be displeased with the denouement, he was forced to
admit that the cure was not ascribable to natural influences ;
and both he and Dr. Verges, a professor in the Faculty of
Montpellier, so testified before the episcopal commission
which afterward examined the manifestations at the grotto.

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“Bourriette was not cured,” cried some of the “philoso-
phers of the day. “ Bourriette’s eye was never diseased,”
exclaimed others. “ Bourriette imagines that he sees with
the right eye,” insisted many. “ There is no such a person
as Bourriette,” proclaimed a few.

During the next few interviews between the “ lady ” and
Bernadette, there occurred nothing which the child thought
proper to reveal ; but on March 2, she again waited on the
cure , and insisted that he should see to the construction of
the chapel demanded by her celestial visitor. The time had
come when the Abbe Peyramale could yield to his natural
expansiveness of heart when talking with the maiden ; but he
was still governed by prudence when he replied : “ I believe
you now, my daughter ; but it is not my province to grant
your request. That concession depends on the decision of
our bishop, to whom I have submitted a report of all that
has happened at the grotto.” But Mgr. Laurence, the bishop
of Tarbes, one of the most prudent and judicious members
of the French episcopate of that day, thought, as he declared
in a Pastoral published at the time, that “ the hour had
not arrived, when the episcopal authority should intervene
in the matter he contented himself with the receipt of
daily reports, made by witnesses of undoubted probity and
of approved capability, concerning all that happened at the
Massabielle Rocks, and concerning every rumored cure that
took place. Bernadette bore this delay with her habitual
patience and serene confidence that her “ lady ” would work
all things well. But the civil authorities of Lourdes and its
neighborhood were less calm than the prelate, and less serene
than Bernadette; even the Baron Massy, Prefect of the
Hautes-Pyrenees, an excellent Catholic, but whose adminis-
trative zeal seemed to lead him to a belief that, as Lasserre
expresses the idea, “ the part of God (in the affairs of
France) was regulated by both the Orthodox Creed and the
Concordat,” conceived it to be his duty to order the police
and garrison of Lourdes to hold themselves prepared for any
event, and to watch, by day and by night, the grotto and all
its approaches. The government entered on a course of
insulting suspicion, but the people continued to manifest

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their interest and devotion, merely smiling at the regiment
of cavalry which “preserved order ” ; fortunately the immense
majority of the Soldiers and the police were good Catholics,
and the chagrin of the people was neutralized by the air of
sincere respect which both police and soldiers manifested
toward the grotto, and especially toward Bernadette. On
March 4, at least twenty thousand persons knelt with the
voyante as she began her customary recitation of the
Bosary ; and in the afternoon, five or six hundred of these
were still praying, when there burst on the scene a dis-
tracted mother, carrying a dying child two years of age.
Croisine Bouhohorts, to the great fright of her husband and
sympathizing neighbors, had snatched the little consumptive
from its dying couch, crying that she would placfc its emaci-
ated frame in the hands of the Lady of the Grotto. Praying
aloud to the Mother of the Afflicted, the wretched parent
ascended on her knees to the miraculous spring ; she stripped
the babe, apparently in its last agony, of every bit of cloth-
ing ; and then having made the Sign of the Cross over
herself and the little body, she plunged the babe, all save its
head, into the glacial water. Turning indignantly to those
who cried that she was killing her infant, and who tried to
lift it from the 'spring, she exclaimed : “ Leave me ! I must
do what I can ; the good God and the Holy Virgin will do
the rest.” . The crowd retired a few steps, saying that the
babe was already dead, and that the crazy mother should
be humored. During fifteen minutes the immobile, corpse-
like frame remained in its icy bed ; then the mother carried
it to her cottage. “ You have killed him” ; cried the father.
“ No,” replied Croisine ; “ the Holy Virgin has cured him.”
So it had happened ; the babe slept well that night, and in
the morning he who had never walked a step was running
around the cottage. Dr. Peyrus, the physician who had
attended the child, and Drs. Verges and Dozous, testified to
the supernatural nature of this cure, drawing attention to
the length of the immersion, to the immediate effect, and to
the acquisition of the power of walking, which the babe had
never evinced, and which he Continued to enjoy. Several
other miracles occurred at this time, but we shall adduce only

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8TUDIE8 IN CHURCH HI8T0RY.

that of Blaise Maumus, who was cured of an enormous wen
by plunging his hand into the spring, the wen disappearing
immediately ; that of a widow named Crozat, who was cured
of an all but absolute deafness by an application of the
water ; and that of a cripple named Auguste Bordes, whose
•crooked leg was restored to its natural form and pristine
strength by the same means. In the face of all these at
least presumed facts, what course was pursued by the
incredulist servants of the imperial government ? Lasserre
replies : “ The Administration, the Parquet (the prosecuting
officers), the Police, did nothing ; but turning aside, they
deemed it prudent to not risk a public examination of facts
which were notorious throughout the land. In the presence
of such striking prodigies, what does this abstention signify ?
It shows that incredulism is prudent. Even amid its
extravagancies and its passions, the spirit of party has a
certain instinct of self-preservation which warns it of danger
when it is on the point of falling into that danger. ... A
change of front then takes place, and a petty warfare is
undertaken on a less perilous field. In the military order,
such a course is proper ; but in the order of ideas, similar
prudence is scarcely compatible with good faith. It implies
a doubt and even disquietude as to the truth of its own
thesis. Nay, I must say that it indicates a suspicion that
what it combats is true. ... In spite of the many invitations
extended, incredulism turned a deaf ear to everything which
would procure a public debate concerning these wonderful
cures. It affected a complete indifference in regard to
striking phenomena which were objects of the senses, and
which were notorious and easy of study ; it preferred to
advance theories on hallucinations — to occupy a very indis-
tinct field, where one could declaim at his ease without being
troubled by the brutality of visible, palpable, and irrefutable
facts. In fine, the Supernatural offered debate ; Free Inves-
tigation declined that debate, sounded a retreat, and thus
proclaimed its defeat.” Of course the incredulists used
ridicule as an argument against the “besotted” Catholics
who proclaimed their belief in miracles by their belief in
the prodigies of Lourdes ; and the same devotees of Free

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Thought did not forget, on this occasion, their favorite
weapon, brazen mendacity. Thus, the governmental journal
L’lZre Imperial !e, in its issue of March 6, asked its readers to
believe that the partisans of Bernadette proclaimed that
during her ecstasies a dove continually fluttered over her
head ; that those partisans declared that their idol had
given sight to a blind child, by blowing into his eyes ; that
they insisted’ that when a certain peasant of the vale of
Campan had refused to credit the assertions of the voyante,
she changed his sins into snakes, and that the reptiles so
efficaciously devoured the irreverent wretch, that not an atom
of his body remained.

Since the last day of the fortnight designated by her “ lady”
for the visits to the Massabielle Bocks, Bernadette had
gone thither several times before she again beheld the appa-
rition. It was on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation,
that she was once more raised almost to the height of heav-
enly bliss, and it was then that she obtained the answer to
the question which the Abbe Peyramale had told her to pro-
pound to her mysterious visitor. As soon as the “lady ”
had appeared, the child expressed the great desire of her
heart : “ Please, my Lady, do tell me your name, and who
you are ! ” Thrice the demand was repeated, but saving an
indulgent smile, no answer was vouchsafed ; however, the
fourth repetition was followed by a declaration which tran-
scended the very untheological capacity of the still ill-in-
formed mind of Bernadette. Separating her hands, which
had remained joined in the attitude of prayer as they had
been during all the apparitions, the “ lady ” allowed them to
fall to her side ; then raising them toward heaven, while an
ineffable expression of gratitude shone on her countenance,
«he exclaimed : “ I am the Immaculate Conception ,” and im-
mediately disappeared. Bernadette, as we have observed,
was still very imperfectly informed concerning even the
essential truths of religion ; she had never heard of an “ Im-
maculate Conception ” ; and as she wended her way toward
the house of the cure , she continually repeated the words,
so that being well-fixed in her memory, they might be cor-
rectly reported to the priest. Undoubtedly the reader has

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STUDIES IN CHUBCH HISTORY.

wondered why the Blessed Virgin used that peculiar phrase-
ology, instead of one of the apparently more correct expres-
sions : “ I am the Immaculate Mary,” or “ I am she who was
conceived without sin.” The reader may possibly have
suspected that the phrase ascribed to Mary might have indi-
cated that it had originated in the still comparatively rude
mind of Bernadette. If such an objection has been con-
ceived, it must be remembered that not only such an idea as-
that of an Immaculate Conception was utterly foreign to the
imagination of the voyante , but that the words of Mary
admirably, and more forcibly than those ordinarily used,,
expressed her wonderful and unique prerogative. As Las-
serre remarks : “ These woMs sound as though Mary, if she
wished to say that she is pure, would not say : ‘ I am pure,’
but rather : ‘ I am purity ’ ; as though she would not say
‘ I am a virgin,’ but rather, ‘ I am Living and Incarnate-
Virginity.* ” On April 7, the Wednesday after Easter, when.
Bernadette knelt at the grotto in the presence of nearly ten
thousand persons (1), she held in her hand a very long
lighted candle which she rested on the ground. When the
visitor appeared, and the ecstasy began, the child, in order
to join her hands in suppliant adoration, slipped them up
to the lighted end of the candle, holding it between her*
wrists, while the fingers were interlaced in the flame which
was plainly seen curling around them and waving with the
gentle motion of the air. She remained for fifteen minutes,
according to Dr. Dozous, who took care to time this feature
of her ecstasy, insensible to any pain. When the ec-
stasy terminated, the nearest persons seized her hand, and
examined it ; there was no sign of its having been burnt.
Then one of the spectators, having taken the candle from
her, held the flame quite near to her hand ; whereupon
she retreated a step, crying : “ Monsieur, you are burning
me,” and then calmly joined the companions of her every-
day life. And here we must note that although the name of
“ Bernadette the voyante ” was already on many thousands

(1) In Letter No. 86, written by the Mayor of Lourdes to the Prefect, It la stated tM on
this occasion governmental agents had been appointed to count the number in attendance ;
and that It was found that there were 9,060 persons, of whom 4,238 were strangers to*
Lourdes.

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of lips ; although she was continually visited by many of
•the most illustrious persons in society ; her simplicity was
ever as marked as it had been when she was tending the
sheep of her foster-parents. None of the children in her
school enjoyed play more than Bernadette ; in fine, until
the day when she donned the robe of a Sister of Charity,
and was freed from the admiring persecutions of the world,
that world saw nothing in her that was not child-like. Some
of her remarks, however, were quaint and very much to the
point. Thus, when M. de Resseguier, a counsellor-general
.and former deputy for the Basses-Pyrenees, brought several
ladies of the elite to see her, and then told her that she uttered
an untruth when she asserted that her “ lady ” addressed her
in the dialect of the Pyrenees, since “ the good God and the
Holy Virgin do not know that miserable language.” She
asked : “ If they do not know it, how comes it that we know
it ? ” When the lawyer asked her whether the Blessed
Virgin was as beautiful as the ladies there present, she made
a little pout of something like disdain, saying : “ Ah ! the
"beauty of Our Lady is very different from tout cela When
she was asked what she would do, if the cure were to forbid
her to go any more to the grotto, she replied that she would
obey ; and when she was asked what she would do, if, after
that prohibition, her u lady ” should command her to go, she
answered : “ I would beg for permission from the cure .”

On April 28, there occurred at Nay, in the Basses-Pyre-
nees, one of the most striking of the events which were then
corroborating the truth of the asseverations of Bernadette.
Two years previously, a boy named Henri Busquet, then
thirteen years of age, had been afflicted with a violent ty-
phoid fever. The malady left him with an abscess, as large
as an ordinary fist, which covered the right side of his neck ;
and the pain was at times so terrific, that he would roll on
the floor in his agony. Dr. Subervielle, one of the most re-
nowned practitioners in Southern France, had tried every
known remedy in vain, when the boy insisted on being taken
to the Grotto of Lourdes. It was deemed impossible for
the lad to live after such a journey, and therefore he
besought his father to procure for him some of the water

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from the holy spring ; and when it had been brought, Henri
removed his bandages, bathed the ulcer with the water,
although the physicians had warned him never to use cold
fluids for that purpose, and then tried to compose himself to-
sleep. His rest during that night was perfect ; and in the
morning, he found that his pains had vanished entirely, and
that a scar, which appeared like one that had been formed
years before, was all that reminded him of his terrible ulcer.
Occurrences such as this, and there were many of them, en-
raged the philosophists of the day ; and they racked their
brains in order to devise some means of checking what they
termed the unbridled audacity of the fanatics. Mesmer-
izers undertook to subject Bernadette to their influences,,
trusting that they might procure from her avowals of fraud-
ulent practices ; but she proved to be insusceptible to the
magnetic fluid. Traps were laid in the hope that it might
be shown that the Soubirous were exploiting certain powers
of their daughter for purposes of gain ; but it was notorious,
that the family remained as poor as they had ever been,
and that they had refused to accept all donations which their
many visitors had pressed upon them. Then a grand idea
was conceived ; Bernadette was to be pronounced a victim
of hallucination, and for that reason was to be confined in a
madhouse. The imperial Prefect was induced to order an
examination of the child by two physicians, each of them
a determined foe of the supernatural ; but the result of the
investigation was a declaration that while the girl was asth-
matic, her brain had no lesions, her nerves were normal,
and all her faculties were in perfect equilibrium. However,
added the wise men, she might he subject to hallucinations .
Armed with this might , the imperial perfect inaugurated the
Month of May in one of the most Catholic portions of France
by an address to all the mayors of the Canton of Lourdes,
in which, according to the official journal, L'lZrc Imperial e
of May 8, “ he showed how the scenes at the grotto had
compromised the good name of religion ; and how the estab-
lishment of an oratory at the grotto had constituted an i ille-
gality, since the law forbids the erection of a public chapel or
oratory without the previous consent of the government.”

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And then this zealous official announced that he had ordered
the arrest of Bernadette as a “ disseminator of false news,”
the said Bernadette to be confined for the present in the
asylum in Tarbes ; and he also informed the mayors that he
had order the removal of every object of devotion from the
grotto. Afraid of the effect of this ukase on his fellow-cit-
izens, the Mayor of Lourdes besought the imperial procur-
ator, Dutour, to accompany him on a visit to the Abbe
Peyramale, in order to enlist that influential clergyman in
the cause of “legality”; but as he ’must, have anticipated,
the priest interrupted the explanations of the procurator
with this indignant protest : “ That child is innocent, sir ;
and the proof of her innocence is found in the fact that you,
in spite of interrogatories of every kind, have discovered no
pretext for prosecuting her.” The procurator vainly adduced
a number of sophisms in favor of the “ legality ” of the pre-
fect’s action ; the care protested : “ This prosecution is inex-
cusable. As priest and as care-doyen of the Canton of
Lourdes, I belong to all, more especially to the weak ; and
if I see an armed man attacking a child, I shall defend that
child, even at the risk of my life, and even though that man
were the prefect, armed with an iniquitous passage of an in-
iquitous law. Go, sir, to Baron Massy, and tell him that his
police will find me at the door of this poor family, and that
his agents will trample me under their feet, before they suc-
ceed in touching a hair on the head of Bernadette ! As for the
dismantling of the grotto, let the prefect, if he wishes, in the
name of the law and of his own piety, appropriate the objects
which innumerable Catholics have dedicated to the honor
of the Holy Virgin. The faithful will grieve, and will be in-
dignant ; but the prefect may rest assured that the inhabi-
tants of these districts respect the civil authority, even when
it is delirious. They say that already at Tarbes cavalry are in
the saddle, awaiting the prefect’s signal to charge on Lourdes.
Well, let the troopers dismount ; for hotheaded though my
people may be, lacerated though their hearts may be, they
obey my words. If the troops do not come, I answer for
the tranquillity of my flock ; if the soldiers show themselves,
I shall not be responsible for the consequences.” The mayor

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reported these words to Massy, and declared that he would
not act in the matter of the proposed arrest of Bernadette ;
that if the prefect refused to reconsider his determination,
the outrage would necessarily be committed by some other
person than the mayor. The prefect did reconsider his res-
olution, and Bernadette was not disturbed ; but Jacomet, the
Commissioner of Police, was ordered to despoil the grotto.
Lasserre gives many interesting details of this sacrilegious
operation which horrified the thousands of weeping spec-
tators. We merely note that the woman who mercenarily
loaned her cart to Jacomet for the transportation of the
sacred furniture, after every other owner of carts and horses
had refused to be his accomplices even for gain, fell from her
hay-loft on the following day, and broke several of her ribs ;
that at the same time a joist crushed both feet of the man
who had loaned to Jacomet a hatchet with which to demolish
the railing which had been placed around the grotto. These
occurrences were, of course, mere coincidences in the eyes of
the philosophists ; and the contrary opinion of the devout
served only to impel the foes of the supernatural to adopt
more subtle means for the annihilation of “ superstition.”
On June 8, the prefect issued a decree whereby, after a de-
claration that he was acting only in the interests of religion
by obviating a repetition of the regrettable scenes lately
witnessed at the Massabielle Rocks ; that it was the duty of
the civil authority to safeguard the public health by a care-
ful examination of mineral waters : and that finally it was well
known that no person could exploit mineral waters without
the previous consent of the government; he prohibited all
persons from taking water from the Spring at the grotto, and
for the more efficacious observance of his decree he ordered
that the local authorities should not allow any person to
approach the grotto. But in spite of this decree ; in spite
of the barriers which were erected around the grotto ; and
in spite of the guards (very frequently, it must be admitted,
devoted sons of Mary) ; the salutary waters continued to be
drawn from the spring, and the local magistrate, one Duprat,
vainly tried to put an end to the “ evil ” by rendering each
^culprit responsible not only for his or her particular fine of

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five francs, but also for the fines — en solidarite — of all the
other criminals. Not every recalcitrant, however, was
dragged before this magisterial genius ; if Massy, Jacomet,
and their brethren knew nothing about theological epikeia ,
they realized the propriety of admitting an “ exception of
persons.” When the wife of Admiral Bruat, the governess
of the Prince Imperial, made known her identity after her
arrest, she was dismissed with profuse apologies.

By this time the philosophists had come to the conclusion
that the supposition of hallucination could no longer be
presented as accounting for the wonderful cures effected at
Lourdes ; they now suddenly opined that those cures were
real indeed, but that they were purely natural effects of
wondrously powerful medicinal waters. On April 28, Dr.
Lary, a worthy physician of the Canton who disbelieved in
the miraculous, had written to a colleague as follows concern-
ing one of the prodigies : “ This woman, Mme. Galop, had
been so afflicted by rheumatism in her left hand, that she
could grasp nothing with it. . . . For eight months she had
neither made her bed, nor sewed a stitch. ; but after one trip
to Lourdes, where she used the water internally and externally,
she sewed with great ease, she made her bed, she drew water
from the well, she washed and carried her china to the
table — in fine, she used her left hand nearly as well as the
right . . . She intends to return to the grotto, and I shall see
that she calls on you, so that you may be convinced of the
truth of what I have said. On examination you will perceive
that she has an incomplete ankylosis of the metacarpo-
phalangial articulation of the index-finger — the sole remnant
of the olden trouble. If a reiterated use of the water of the
grotto banishes this morbid condition, the disappearance
will be a proof of the alkalinity of that water.” In fact,
after the second visit to the grotto, Mme. Galop was entirely
cured ; and the letter of Dr. Lary was immediately quoted
by the incredulists as having furnished the explanation of all
the wonders of Lourdes. These gentry were determined to
recognize nothing supernatural ; anything extra-natural was
welcome, but on no account was any credit to be given to God.
They feigned to regard as of no value the reflections of the

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STUDIES m CHURCH HISTORY.

“ fanatics ” on the fact that this presumed “ medicinal ” water
had been discovered by Bernadette while she was in a state
of ecstasy superinduced by her celestial visions (real or
false), and that the discovery seemed to prove the heavenly
origin of the apparition. They laughed at the assertion that
Bernadette discovered the spring while she obeyed the
supernatural injunction (real or imaginary) to go and drink
at that spot where water had never flowed. Great was their
glee when the chemist of the Administration, Latour de Trie,,
after an analysis of the water, declared that “ its constituent
substances showed that perhaps medical science would in
time perceive that the spring possessed special curative
power ” (1) ; but it was rather unfortunate for the eclat of the
fancied triumph of the prefect, that he had forgotten to warn
his official journal of the imminent triumph of chemistry
over superstition, and that because of that neglect, on the
very day when Latour de Trie submitted his report, May 6,
the zeal of ’ L'Ere Imperiale led it to qualify as mere “dirty
water” that which the governmental chemist was lauding as
probably beneficent : “ It goes without saying that the famous
grotto floods our Department with miracles; at every turn in
the fields you hear people talking about the thousands of
cures which have followed the use of this eau malpropre -
Very soon physicians will have lost their occupation ; all
rheumatics and consumptives will have disappeared from
the Department.” The governmental chemist could have
afforded a pitying smile to the unscientific journalist; but
his own report appeared unsatisfactory to many who con-
sidered the variety and suddenness of so many of the operated
cures. And a chemist of some repute, Thomas Pujo, soon
followed by many others, even insisted that the analysis
effected by himself had demonstrated that the water in

(lj We submit the result of the official chemical examination : “ The water of the grotto
of Lourdes is very limpid, inodorous, and with no pronounced taste. Its specific gravity is
very near that of distilled water ; its temperature at the spring is 15° centigrade. Its con-
stituents: I. Chlorides of soda, calx, and magnesia: abundant. II. Carbonates of calx
and' magnesia. III. Silicatesof calx and akimine. IV. Oxide of iron. V. Sulphate of
soda and carbonate of soda. VI. Traces of Phosphate. VII. Organic matter: ulmine.
In the composition of this water there is a complete absence of sulphate of calx or
selenite ; and this quality, very remarkable, is to its advantage, forcing us to conclude
that it aids digestion and gives to the animal economy a disposition which benefits the-
equilibrium of the vital action. We run no risk in saying that,” etc., as above.

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question was the ordinary article, utterly destitute of any
special therapeutic value. Much was written on both sides
of the dispute ; and finally, without consulting the prefect,
the Municipal Council of Lourdes requested one of the most
illustrious chemists of the century, Prof. Filhol, of the
Faculty of Toulouse, to analyze the water. This task was
imposed on M. Filhol on June 3, the day on which Berna-
dette received her Sacramental Lord for the first time ; and
on Aug. 7, the professor submitted the result of his investiga-
tions to the mayor of Lourdes — an analysis which completely
nullified the conclusions of M. Latour de Trie. “ This
analysis shows that the water from the grotto of Lourdes lias
the constituents of all the drinkable waters which are found
in mountains where the soil is richly calcareous. As for the
extraordinary effects which are said to have followed the use
of this water, said effects cannot be explained, at least in the
present condition of science, by the nature of the salts which
analysis has found in the water. The said water contains no
active substance which would be capable of endowing it with
the indicated therapeutic properties” (1). It is evident,
therefore, that the naturalistic theorizers had at least not
proved their hypothesis to the satisfaction of all truly scien-
tific men ; that is, the incredulist foes of the supernatural
had not demonstrated the presumed hallucination of the
voyante of Lourdes by any proof of the natural therapeutic
value of the water w hich testified, in the opinion of thousands,
of Catholics, to the reality of Bernadette’s visions.

On July 28, Mgr. Laurence, the bishop of Tarbes, appoint-
ed an episcopal commission for the purpose of determining
the answers to four questions of consummate importance :
Whether the alleged cures, operated by the drinking of

(1) Lasserre gives this report in its entirety ; we shall quote merely the results of the
analysis : “ The water of the grotto holds in solution : I., Oxygen. II., Azote. III., Car-
bonic acid. IV., Carbonates of calx, magnesia, and a trace of Carbonate of iron. V., A
Carbonate or an alkaline silicate of the chlorides of potassium and sodium. VI., Traces
of sulphate of potassium and of soda. VII., Traces of Ammonia. VIII., Traces of Iodium.
The quantative analysis of the water, effected by the ordinary method, gave the following
results in one kilogramme : Carbonic acid. 8 centigrammes ; Oxygen, 5 centigr. ; Azote, 12
centigr. ; Ammonia, traces ; Carbonate of calx, .096 milligr. : Carbonate of magnesia, .017
milligr. : Carbonate of iron, traces; Carbonate of soda, traces; Chloride of sodium, .008.
milligr. ; Chloride of potassium, traces ; Silicate of soda and traces of Silicate of potassium,.
.018 milligr. ; Sulphate of potassium and of soda, traces ; Iodium, traces. Total, 434 mil-
ligrammes.

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water from the grotto of Lourdes, or by means of bathing
with said water, could be explained naturally, or whether they
should be attributed to a supernatural cause ; whether the pre-
sumed visions of Bernadette Soubirous were real, and whether
in that case, they could be explained naturally, or should rath-
er be regarded as impressed with a supernatural and divine
character ; whether the personage seen by Bernadette (if
really seen) had made demands on the child, or manifested
certain intentions to her ; and whether the spring, now flow-
ing in the grotto of Lourdes, existed before the presumed
visions of Bernadette occurred. The commission was com-
posed of nine canons of the Cathedral of Tarbes, the superi-
ors of the Grand and Preparatory Seminaries, the superior of
the diocesan missionaries, the cure of Lourdes, and the pro-
fessors of dogmatic theology, moral theology, and phj^sics,
in the Grand Seminary. Scarcely had the commission been
appointed, when the bishop received from M. Rouland, the
imperial Minister of Worship, a letter which, coupled with
the episcopal reply, will dispense us from detailing some
episodes which had recently occurred at the grotto and in the
neighborhood of Lourdes. The imperial director of the re-
ligious affairs of France informed the prelate that he had
heard how “ the affair of Lourdes was of a nature which
necessarily afflicted all persons who were truly religious.”
He sternly condemned “ the blessing of Rosaries by children,
and all manifestations in which, in the front ranks, women
of equivocal morals were prominent.” He reprobated the
“grotesque ceremonies which parodied those of true relig-
ion,” because he feared, in his apostolic zeal, that “ Prot-
estant journals would take advantage of them.” And he
besought the bishop “ to publicly condemn all similar profan-
ations.” The reply of the bishop was as follows : “ Monsieur
le Ministre ; your communication has astonished me. I am
well informed concerning everything that happens at Lourdes,
:and as a bishop I am deeply interested in a reprobation of
whatever might injure religion or the faithful. I can assure
you that the scenes mentioned by you have not been of the
nature which you describe ; and I can also assure you that if
certain regrettable things have occurred, they have been so

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transient as to leave no trace behind them. Tour Excellency
alludes to things which happened after the grotto was closed
to the public, and in the early part of July. Then two or
three children of Lourdes played the part of visionaries, and
emitted certain extravagancies in public. The grotto hav- -
ing been closed, as I have remarked, these boys contrived
to pass the barriers, and approaching the visitors who were
praying on the other side, offered to take Rosaries from those
visitors in order to touch the beads to the interior of the
grotto, and also to deposit offerings which they appropri-
ated to themselves. One of these children, the most
remarkable for conduct which was far from edifying, was one
of the choir-boys of the church of Lourdes ; and the cure
reprimanded him severely, expelled him from the catechism
class, and banished him from the service of the altar. The
disorder was a passing one, and the people regarded it as a
boyish frolic which would cease under threats of punish-
ment Such are the facts which have been reported by
superfluously zealous parties as permanent scandals. I
would be pleased, Monsieur le Ministre, if you would derive
your information concerning Lourdes from its regular inhabi-
tants and from the child who declares that she saw the
apparition, as well as from the many respectable personages
who have visited the grotto — persons like the bishops of
Montpellier and Soissons, the archbishop of Auch, the wife of
Admiral Braut, Louis Yeuillot, etc. The prudence of the
clergy of the district has been admirable ; they have ref rained
from visiting the grotto, and have even favored the measures
adopted by the authorities. And nevertheless, these priests

have been denounced as favorers of superstition On

June 8, the Mayor of Lourdes prohibited all access to the
grotto (by order of the Prefect) ; and the alleged reasons
were based on a presumed care for the interests of religion
and of the public welfare. Religion was made an excuse for
this action, although the bishop had not been consulted ;

and nevertheless, the prelate formulated no protest

Now, however, yielding to pressure from all sides, I have
determined to give my attention to this matter ; and accord-
ingly I have appointed a Commission which will gather the

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

data necessary to enable me to come to a decision on a sub-
ject which seems to interest the whole of France.” This
letter produced no change in the philosophistic and tyran-
nous policy of Rouland ; Massy and Jacomet continued to
arrest those who dared to pray before the grotto, otherwise
than from the opposite side of the Gave, and Duprat con-
tinued to impose his fines. But during a visit of Napoleon
III. to Biarritz in September, the archbishop of Audi, Mgr.
de Sal inis, waited on His Majesty ; and besought him, in the
name of the rights of conscience, to withdraw the matter
of Lourdes from the cognizance of Minister, Prefect, and
Police Commissioner, and to act in accordance with his own
sense of justice and of humanity. The emperor immedi-
ately wrote a dispatch to the Prefect of Tarbes, ordering him
to cancel his prohibitory decree, and to permit the people
to have free access to the grotto. On Oct. 5, the barriers
were removed.

It would certainly interest the reader if we were to quote
at some length from the lucubrations of the Liberal journal-
istic quidnuncs of that time, as they prognosticated concern-
ing the probable outcome of the investigation ordered by
Mgr. Laurence. Such journals as the Sifcle , the Journal
des Debats, the Presse, the Independance Beige , as well as
nearly all the secular journals of England, the United States,
and Germany, teemed with effusions no more honest or
reasonable than an ebullition of the Atmterdamsche Courant
in its issue of Sept. 9, with which our limits compel us to be
satisfied: “A new manifestation, designed to rekindle and
nourish the ardor of the faithful in the worship of the Virgin,
was imminent. The deliberations of the bishops on this point
resulted in the preparation of the famous miracle of Lourdes.
Recently the bishop of Tarbes appointed a Commission in-
structed to enquire into this miracle ; but the so-called con-
clusions of the report of this Commission were prepared long
previous to its first session. Bernadette, the pretended shep-
herdess, is no innocent little peasant-girl ; she is a very well
educated and very cunning young woman of the bourgeoisie,
who resided for many months in a cloistered nunnery where
she was taught the part that she was to play. Long before

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the drama was presented in public, it was rehearsed in this con-
vent before a small number of select spirits. If ever there is
a dearth of sorry dramatists in Paris, it can easily be supplied
by the upper clergy. However, the Liberal press has so
ridiculed this farce from beginning to end, that it is not im-
possible that the priests will be prudent, out of regard for
their own interests.” All the pliilosophists of the day did
not confide in the “ prudence ” of the clergy of Lourdes?
many called on the emperor to prevent the Commission from
rendering any decision in the matter of the apparition. Pre-
vost-Paradol, who was soon to commit suicide while repre-
senting his country in Washington (1870), even dared to
argue that it would be an injustice to the other religions
tolerated by the State, if God were supposed to manifest a
particular interest in any special religion : “ It is evident,”
said this coryphee of Masonic enlightenment, “ that by any
striking manifestation in favor of one religion, the Deity
openly attests its truth, its superiority over all others, and
its incontestable right to govern souls. This decision, there-
fore, will naturally be followed by many desertions from
the ranks both of dissidents and incredulists ; it will be, in

a word, an instrument of proselytism It will tend, to

some extent, to destroy in France the proper equilibrium
between the religious and the civil power. The ministers of
the favored religion, the one which the prodigies will have
favored, are not those whom the Concordat foresaw, organ-
ized, and regulated ; they exercise another influence over the
people, and in case of conflict, they will guide the people in-
dependently of Prefects and Councils of State Nothing

can be done legally in France without a previous authoriza-
tion of the Administration. If, as M. de Morny once well
said, a stone cannot be moved or a ditch dug without the
consent of the Administration, much less, without that con-
sent, can a miracle be approved or a pilgrimage be instituted.
Whoever has any acquaintance with religious affairs knows
perfectly well that the administrative authority has on its side
not one means, but ten ; not one law, but twenty or thirty
which accord to it supreme power in such matters. The
sessions of the Commission of Tarbes can be prevented or

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

dissolved in a hundred ways by an invocation of the Con-
cordat, of the Penal Code, of the law of 1824, of the decree
of Feb., 1852, or of municipal and every other kind of author-
ity ” (1). However, the imperial government did not allow
itself to be tempted to this ridiculous pretension to a legiti-
mate competency in the premises ; the emperor may have
been influenced by his pious consort, or he may have appre-
ciated these remarks of Louis Yeuillot : “ We do not doubt
the existence of ordinances permitting the government to
interfere with the sessions of the episcopal Commission ;
but the wisdom of the Tuling powers ought to convince them
that their interference* would favor superstition. Govern-
mental intervention would give free rein to popular credulity,
since then the bishop would be unable to decide the matter
in question ” (2). When the Commission entered on its task*
it found that hundreds of alleged miraculous cures awaited
its consideration. It decided that an investigation of only
thirty would suffice for its purposes ; and it selected those
whose instantaneousness rendered them especially remark-
able, carefully ignoring those which were alleged to have
occurred while the subject was under medical treatment, since,
as the secretary said in his report : “ Although in these cases
the inefficaciousness of the remedies had been sufficiently de-
monstrated, nevertheless, the cures could not be rigorously and
exclusively ascribed to a supernatural virtue of the water of
the grotto, since it had been used simultaneously with those
remedies.” The report of the Commission divided the in-
vestigated prodigies into three classes : In the first class
were six cures which, striking though they indubitably were,
could possibly be explained by the laws of nature ; in the
second class were nine prodigies which were deemed by the
testifying physicians to present supernatural conditions, but
in which those supernatural conditions were not necessarily
to be acknowledged ; in the third class were fifteen cases which
the Commission declared to be undeniably of a supernatural
character. All of these cases in the third class were of
widely different maladies ; nevertheless, all had yielded to

(1) Thus wrote Provost- Paradol Id the Journal des Debate* Sept. 8, 1858.

(2) L'Cnieer *. Sept. 10, 1858.

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the application of one and the same thing — a fact which is
not in accordance with the natural and scientific order, since
according to that order each remedy is beneficial in certain
classes of maladies, but injurious in others. It cannot be
said, therefore, declared the report, that it was some inher-
ent natural property of the water of the Massabielle Rocks
that produced effects not only so extraordinary, numerous,
and sudden, but also diverse in their nature. In the medical
report we read : “ When we first examined these cases (of
the third class) we were surprised by the ease, promptness,
nay, instantaneousness, with which the effects had been
produced ; by the complete violation of all therapeutic laws
in each case ; by the contradictions of all the precepts and
provisions of science which each case displayed ; by a sort
of disdain manifested in regard to the duration and deep-
seatedness of disease ; by a kind of hidden but real care in
so arranging and combining the circumstances, as to show
that in the cure it would be evident that all had been effected
outside of the habitual order of nature. These phenomena
are beyond the comprehension of the human mind. How
indeed can we understand an opposition between the means
and the grandeur of the result ; between the oneness of the
remedy and the diversity of the maladies ; between the brief
application of the curative agent and the length of the treat-
ment prescribed by science ; between the sudden effica-
ciousness of the first and the long futility of the second •
between the chronicity of disease and the instantaneousness
of the cure ? Certainly there must be here a contingent force
which is superior to those derived from nature, and which is
consequently foreign to the water which it uses for a manifes-
tation of its power.” To a mind ill-informed concerning the
habitual attitude of the authorities of the Church in regard
to matters of a reputed miraculous nature, this report might
seem capable of producing in the mind of the episcopal
judge a conviction that the visions of Bernadette were real,
and that the prodigies effected by the water of Lourdes
were true miracles. But Mgr. Laurence demanded further
proof ; he wished to be assured as to the permanency of the
reputed cures ; and not until Jan. 18, 1862, more than three

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years after he had received the favorable report of the
Commission, did he issue the much-desired approbation in
an apposite Pastoral to his flock. In this document the
prelate begins by reminding his people how, at intervals
during the entire history of humanity, there have been
marvellous communications between heaven and earth ; how
in the very first days of that history, God appeared to our
first parents in order to rebuke them for their disobedience ;
how in the succeeding centuries God conversed familiarly
with the Patriarchs ; and how, as we read in the Old Testa-
ment, the children of Israel were often favored with celestial
apparitions. And the bishop carefully notes that these
divine favors could scarcely be expected to terminate with
the Old Law; nay, he insists, such manifestations were
naturally to be more numerous and more striking under the
Law of Grace, and history attests that they were not restrict-
ed to the first days of Christianity — that ever since that
period they have frequently occurred for the glory of religion
and the edification of the faithful. Then the bishop nar-
rates briefly the wonderful experiences of Bernadette, but he
also reminds his flock that “ the Church is wisely slow in
forming a judgment concerning reputed supernatural occur-
rences ; that she demands certain proofs of their super-
naturalness, since from the date of the original fall of man,
and especially in matters of tbis kind, humanity has ever
been subject to error, yielding now to the deceptions of its
own weak reason, and then to the wiles of the demon who
often transforms himself into an angel of light.” We are
told how the bishop had studied the manifestations at the
Massabielle Rocks for nearly four years ; and that his
convictions had been formed not only because of the testi-
mony of Bernadette, but because of the events which fol-
lowed the apparitions, and which could have been effected
only by divine interposition. And as for the testimony of
the little girl herself, the prelate regards it as indubitably
trustworthy. “ In the first place,” he insists, “ her sincerity
is unquestionable. Who does not admire, if he approaches
this child, her simplicity, candor, and modesty ? While
everybody talks about the wonders that she has seen and

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lieard, she remains silent ; she speaks only when she is
interrogated, and then she narrates without affectation, her
answers to the numerous questions being always to the
point, and evidently proceeding from firm conviction. She
was never influenced by threats ; she always rejected the most
generous offers of assistance (whether for herself or for her
family). Always consistent, she never varied in the slight-
est degree in her narrative, during the many interrogatories
to which she was subjected. But it has been asked whether,
if not herself a deceiver, Bernadette may not be a victim
of hallucination ? We cannot harbor this suspicion. The
wisdom of her replies reveals a rectitude, a calmness of
imagination, and a good sense, which are superior to those
possessed usually by children of her age. In her, religious
sentiment has never been exaltedness ; she has never mani-
fested any weakness of intellect or any mutability of views,
any extravagancies of character, or any morbidness which
might dispose her to freaks of imagination. . . . But the
testimony of Bernadette, so important in itself, is corrob-
orated by the wonderful events which occurred after the first
apparition ; if we may judge of a tree by its fruit, that
apparition was supernatural and divine, since it produces
supernatural and divine effects.” In conclusion, the bishop
declares : “ Having invoked the Holy Name of God, and
following the rule established by Pope Benedict XIV. for
the discernment of true and false apparitions (1) ; having
read the favorable report presented by the Commission
appointed by us to consider the apparition at the Grotto of
Lourdes and its consequences ; having read the testimony of
the physicians whom we consulted concerning the numerous
cures which have followed applications of the water from
the grotto ; and considering firstly, that the fact of the
apparition, whether it be regarded in reference to the child
who narrated the event, or whether it be regarded in refer-
ence to the extraordinary effects which it has produced, can
be explained only by a recognition of the intervention ofa
supernatural cause ; considering secondly, that this cause
could be no other than divine, since its effects were such

(1) Canonization of Saints, Bk. ill., ch. 66.

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perceptible results of grace as the conversion of sinners, or
such derogations from the law of nature as miraculous cures
—effects which could be produced only by the Author of
grace and the Master of nature ; considering, finally, that our
conviction is strengthened by the immense and spontaneous
attendance of the faithful at the grotto — an attendance
which has been continual since the first apparitions, and
the purpose of which has been the receipt of favors or
thanksgiving for benefits already obtained ; therefore, in
order to satisfy the legitimate impatience of our clergy and
people, and that of so many pious persons who have long
asked us to pronounce a decision which motives of prudence
compelled us to defer, and wishing also to yield to the
desires of many of our colleagues in the episcopate ; and
having invoked the light of the Holy Ghost and the aid of
the Most Holy Virgin ; we have declared and do declare as
follows : Art /. We judge that the Immaculate Mary,
Mother of God, on Feb. 11, 1858, and on eighteen follow-
ing occasions, did really appear to Bernadette Soubirous ;
that this apparition presents every characteristic of truth,
and that the faithful may safely credit it. However, we
humbly submit this our judgment to that of the Sovereign
Pontiff, who is entrusted with the government of the Uni-
versal Church. Art II We authorize the cult of Our
Lady of the Grotto of Lourdes in our diocese ; but we for-
bid the publication of any particular formula of prayer, or
of any canticle or book of devotion, referring to the appari-
tion, without our approbation in writing. Art III \ In
order to conform to the desire which tlje Holy Virgin ex-
pressed during several of her appearances— a desire that a
sanctuary should be erected near the grotto, that is, on land
which has recently become the property of the bishops of
Tarbes ; and since the steepness and other difficulties of the
site will entail a need of long labor and relatively large
sums of money for the construction of the edifice ; we
appeal for the requisite means to the clergy and faithful of
our diocese, to those of all France, and to those of all lands
who are zealous for the honor of the Immaculate Conception,
of the Virgin Mary.”

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APPENDIX,

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

Of the Roman Pontiffs , Rulers of Principal Nations , Princi-
pal Councils , Ecclesiastical Writers , awrf Sectarians .

NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Popes.

Date of Election.

Plus VII, 1800

Leo XII, 1823

Plus VIII, 1829

Gregory XVI, 1831

Plus IX, 1846

Leo XIII, 1878

Kings of England.
Date of Death.

George III, supplanted by
a regency In 1800, and
d. in 1820

George IV. 1830

William IV, 1837

Victoria, now reigning

Czars of Russia.

Date of Death.

Paul I. 1801

Alexander I, 1825

Nicholas I, 1855

Alexander II, 1881

Alexander HI, 1894

Nicholas II, now reigning

Holy Roman Emperor.

Francis II, at the com-
mand of Napoleon In
1801, ceased to be Ger-
man erap’r, and as-
sumed the title of emp’r
of Austria as Francis I.

Emperors of Austria.

Date of Death.

Francis I, 1835

Ferdinand I, abdicated In
1848, In favor of
Francis Joseph, now
reigning

Kings of Prussia.

Date of Death.

Fred. Wm. Ill, 1840

Fred. Wm. IV, 1861

William I. became Ger-
man emp’r in 1870

German Emperors.

Date of Death.

William I, 1888

Frederick III, 1888

William II, now reigning

Kings . Emperot' s, etc..

Of France.

Napoleon, abdicated in
1815, d. in 1821

Louis XVIII, d. 1824

Charles X, dep. 1830

Louis Philippe, abd. In
1848, making way for
8econd Republic, which
was followed by the
Second Empire in 1862

Napoleon III, emperor, ab-
dicated in 1870, and was
succeeded by the
Third Republic.

Kings of Spain.

Date of Death.

Charles IV, abdicated in
1808. d. in 1819

Ferdinand VII, 1833

Regency of Christina un-
til 1841. followed by
that of Espartero until
1843 when Queen Isa-
bella II. was declared of
age.

Isabella II. abdicated In 1870
Alfonso XII, 1885

Regency of Maria Chris-
tina, tn the name of
Alfonso XIII. who may
reign in 1903

Ecclesiastical Writers: Plcofc, Joseph de Maistre, Cardinal Maury, Barniel, Fraysslnous,
Bausset, Lamennals, Boyer, Carrifere, Gosselln, Gousset, Parlsis. Gueranger, Lacordaire,
'Cardinal Pie, S<*gur, Pitra, Perrone. Patrizzl, Tosti, Audisio, Curci, Ventura, Rosmini,
Passaglia, Balmes, Lingard, Milner, Cardinal Wiseman, Cardinal Manning, Cardtual New-
man, Cardinal Moran, Gasqnet, Moehler, Theiner, Hefele, Cardinal Hergenraether, Hurter.

Ctmncils: The Council of the Vatican (Nineteenth General). About 200 others.

Sectarians : Antl-Coucordatarlnns, Ronge, Vintras, Traditionalists, Socialists, Natural-
ists, Satanists, Freemasons, Spiritualists, Mormons, “ Old Catholics.”

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SUPPLEMENT.

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THE IDENTITY OF THE THREE MAGI.

497

CHAPTER I.

THE IDENTITY OF THE THREE MAGI OR WISE MEN OF THE EAST. *

Such of our readers as are of Italian or German origin, or
who have resided for any length of time in Italy or in the
Catholic portions of Germany, must have been impressed by
the devotion exhibited in those regions toward the Wise Men
of the East, — those favored persons who came from among
the Gentiles to adore the Expected of Nations, our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ, having been notified of His advent
by the appearance of a newr star, which their wrisdom had
taught them to regard as a sign that God was about to work
some prodigy in favor of fallen man. The devotion to the
Three Kings, or Magi, is more prevalent in Italy and Ger-
manv than in other regions of the Western Patriarchate ; but
every Catholic student will welcome a few reflections on the
condition of life, nationality, etc., of those Gentiles who were
the first of their kind to adore the God-Man, and who, there-
fore, were our first ancestors in the Christian faith. We some-
times speak of these holy men as the Three Kings ; but we
generally denote them by the term “Magi” or “Wise Men.”
Now, the question arises whether these persons were really
magicians, as the term “ Magi ” would seem to indicate.
That up to the time of their extraordinary vocation (for as
such we may designate it) they had been veritable sorcerers,
was believed by St. Justin Martyr, Origen, St. Basil, and St.
Jerome. But that they were merely astronomers— or, as
more modern men -would say, scientists, — was held by such
excellent judges as St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alex-
andria, Theodoret, and Pope St. Leo I. We know that the
word magm was commonly used in the East when men spoke
of any very learned man or philosopher; and hence Baronio,
Maldonado, Calmet, Gotti, and nearly all modern Catholic
biblicists reject the idea that the Three Kings had ever been
guilty of the crime of sorcery or incantation (1).

♦ This chapter appeared In The Aye Maria, Voi. XLII.

(1) That the word magus was used by the ancients to signify a philosopher ia clear from
Cieero, In his treatise On Divination , Bk. I., ch. 23.

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It may be asked, secondly, whether the Magi were really
kings in our sense of the term. Calvin and Beza denied the
royalty of the Wise Men ; and several Catholic critics — e. g.r
Tillemont, Baillet, and Serry — have held the same opinion.
It is difficult, however, to resist the arguments of the general-
ity of Catholic critics, led by such authorities as Baronio,
Sponde, Maldonado, Sandini, Onorato di Santa Maria, and
Gotti. It is not necessary to suppose that the Wise Men
were great monarchs, or even kings in the ordinary sense of
the latter designation. Every Scriptural scholar knows
that Holy Writ frequently applies the term “ king” to the
ruler even of an insignificant village ; and the classical stu-
dent is aware that the Latin word rex is merely the correl-
ative of regere — “ to rule.” We need cite only a few Script-
ural passages in defence of the position held by most Cath-
olic polemics in the premises. In Isaiah , ch. 49, wre read :
“ Kings shall see, and princes shall rise up and adore for the
Lord’s sake.” The entire context of this chapter indicates
that the prophet is treating of God’s summons to the Gen-
tiles to adore His Incarnate Son ; and therefore exegetists
unhesitatingly apply it to the adoration of the Magi. The
same must be said of ch. 60, v. 3 : “ And the Gentiles shall
walk in Thy light, and kings in the brightness of Thy rising ” ;
as well as of Psalm 71, verse 10 : “ The kings of the Arabians
and of Saba shall bring gifts.” Many of the Fathers of
the Church testify to the royalty of the Wise Men. Thus
Tertullian tells us : “ Nearly all the East and Damascus had
kings for their magi ” (1). St. Ambrose says : “ The Magi
are said to have been kings ” (2). About A. D. 310 the poet
Juvencus wrote : “ These lords were called Magi ; and they
were accustomed to note carefully the rising and the course
of the stars. The said lords made a long journey to Jeru-
salem, and went before their King ” (3). And Claudius
Mamertus says : “ The Chaldean kings brought their gifts to

(1) Against the Jews, ch. 9.

(B) In Homily on the Epiphany.

(3) “ Astrorum & tiers ortusque obitusque not are,

Hnjus y/ri mores nomen tcnucre Magorum.

Hine lecti proccres Solymas per longa viarum
Deveniunt , Regemque adcunt.”

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Thee : myrrh to Thee as man, gold to Thee as king, and
incense to Thee as God ” (1).

Those who contend that the Wise Men were not kings rely
upon the silence of St. Matthew as to their royal condition ;
and this objection seems to gather force when we notice that
St. John is careful to note that one of the beneficiaries of Our
Lord was the son of a certain ruler — regulus (petty king).
But if St. Matthew does not mention the regal dignity of the
Wise Men, he says nothing which would contradict it ; and
we may hold with Melchior Canus that it was eminently
proper for the Evangelist, wishing to obtain credit among
the Gentiles for his narrative, to lay stress upon the intel-
lectual calibre of the Magi, rather than upon their more ad-
ventitious splendor (2). Again, it is certain that the con-
doling friends of Job were kings or rulers ; but the sacred
text in Tobias does not so term them. It is urged, sec-
ondly, that Herod treated the Wise Men not as equals, but
as inferiors. In the supposition that they were kings, how
are we to account for the monarch’s brusqueness in telling
them to go after accurate information as to the whereabouts
of the Divine Babe ? To this objection it is not necessary
to reply with Canus that Herod simply displayed an innate
ruffianliness on this occasion. The more natural answer is
implied in the belief that the Magi were really petty kings
or rulers, and therefore of dignity inferior to that of Herod.
And we must not necessarily discern an arrogant command in
the wohls of the monarch. They are easily interpreted as
“ Do you find this Messiah. That accomplished, I also will
go and adore, him.” A tliird objection is made by heterodox
writers, alleging that it was only in the eleventh cen-
tury that Theophvlactus, the first to style the Magi kings,
flourished. The futility of this difficulty is shown by the
testimonies of Tertullian, St. Ambrose, Claudius Mamertus,
and Juvencus, which we have already given ; and the reader
will find additional evidence in the writings of St. Caesarius;
and many other Fathers of the Church.

(1) “ Dant Tibi Chaldwi prcenuntia munera reges ;

Mgrrham homo, rex durum, suscipe thura Dew .”

(2) Theological Sources , Bk. il., ch. 5.

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STUDIES IN CHUJiCH HISTORY.

Ecclesiastical writers are not accordant in tlieir views as to
the nationality of the Magi. Some think that they were Chal-
deans ; others describe them as coming from Arabia Felix ;
while many assign either Ethiopia, Mesopotamia or India as
their country. The most common opinion is that they jour-
neyed from Arabia Felix ; and certainly, if we reflect that Sa-
ba is a part of Arabia, we shall find a basis for that view in the
words of the royal psalmist : “ The kings of the Arabians
and of Saba shall bring gifts.” Again, this opinion is
strengthened by Tertullian (1) and by St. Justin Martyr (2) ;
for both expressly pronounce it. Finally, the gifts tendered
by the Magi, especially the myrrh and incense, were such as
an Arab would deem most appropriate. But it is urged that
the Magi, or Wise Men, were a monopoly of the Chaldeans.
This is not correct ; for we read that Job and his friends
were good philosophers. And St. Cyril of Alexandria in-
forms us that Pythagoras and Porphyrius went for their
studies to Chaldea and to Arabia (3). There is no strength in
the allegation that the olclen pictures and medals represent
the Magi as of different complexions, and therefore as of
diverse nationalities. In the first place, the adduced fact
is not universal. In the picture given by Papebroch, copied
from very ancient rituals, all three kings are shown as white
men. Secondly, we know that artists often, and sometimes
righteously, insist on great latitude in regard to the obser-
vance of historical exactness in their compositions. Now,
a diversity of costume in the component figures of a picture
adds greatly to its attractiveness ; and how much more im-
pressiveness is obtained by the introduction of various fa-
cial characteristics ! Finally, why should we conclude from
the black visage of one of the Magi, even though it occupied
a legitimate place in the picture, that all three of the adorers
did not come from Arabia ? Were there no negro tribes in
Arabia ?

Avery interesting question is raised concerning the time
when the Magi appeared before the Infant Jesus. Eusebius
says that the event occurred two years after the divine

(1) Loc. cit. (2) Against Tryphon.

(3) Against Julian, Bk. x.

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birtli (1) ; and St. Epiphanius contends for the same view (2).
Then the celebrated authors of the Bollandist Lives of the
Saints placed the advent of the Wise Men precisely on the first
anniversary of the birth. They hold also that the guiding
Star of the Magi had appeared twenty-one months before
what they regarded as the first Epiphany, — i e., it is said to
have been created on the day when Our Lady gave her con-
sent to the Incarnation of the Word in her own bosom (3).
And there is still another theory as to the date of this event.
Tillemont, Calmet, Dupin, and Baillet regard it as having
occurred a little before or a little after the Purification of the
Blessed Mother. However, there are excellent arguments
which seem to evince clearly that the correct date of the first
Epiphany was the 6tli of January, the thirteenth day after
the Nativity of Christ. Firstly, St. Matthew narrates that
the Magi found Our Lady and the Blessed Child in Bethle-
hem ; but if they had arrived in Bethlehem one or twfo years
after the birth of J^sus, they would not have found the
Holy Family in that village. When the days of her
Purification were completed, Mary, accompanied by St.
Joseph, took her Divine Babe to Jerusalem, and thence to
Nazareth (4). Secondly, the authority of St. Justin Martyr
and St. Jerome is of great weight, especially in this case.
The former says : “ Mary bore Christ, and placed him in
the Manger, where the Magi, having come from Arabia,
found Him ” (5). And St. Jerome writes : “ Behold the great
Lord of the earth born in this little nook of the earth !
Here He was seen by the Shepherds ; here he was adored
by the Magi ” (6). Are we to suppose that the Holy Family
inhabited that stable for a year or two ? Thirdly, St. Mat-
thew seems to indicate that the adoration of the Magi oc-
curred immediately after our Saviour’s birth ; for he says :
“ When Jesus was born . . . behold, there came Wise Men,”
etc. This use of the word “ behold ” in the circumstances
shows that the Magi arrived very soon after the glorious

(1) Chronicle, (2) Heresies , Nos. 80 and 31.

(3> Zaocaria observes that Papebrocb, after having assigned the day of the Annunciation,
as the date of the first appearance of the Star, anticipates that date by making It concor-
dant with the day of the conception of St. John the Baptist.

(4) St. Luke , ch. 2. (5) To Marcella. CO; Loc. cit.

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8TUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

event ; for such is its meaning in most Biblical passages
where we find it. Fourthly, in the Bollandist supposition,
the Star ought to be styled the Star of the Baptist rather
than “ His Star,” as the Magi termed it. Fifthly, it seems
certain that Herod died three months after the nativity of
Christ, and therefore the Bollandist theory is untenable.

CHAPTER H

THE LEGEND OP THE WANDERING JEW.*

Few legends are so pathetic, none more weird, than that
-which we now present for the consideration of the student
Poems of merit and entrancing novels have been based upon
it ; but the genius who will do it justice has yet to appear.
If it should ever be taken in hand by a thoroughly Christian
writer, one who also possesses an accurate knowledge of
•ecclesiastical as well as of profane history, who is capable of
‘constructing dramatic scenes in both telling and simple form,
and who is endowed with Heaven’s choicest gift to a knight
of the pen — true poetic fire, then men will enjoy a production
which will be worthy of its subject, and which will not be
ephemeral The apposite poems of Schubert and A. W.
iSchlegel are fairly interesting ; but no higher praise can be
-accorded to them. They lose sight of the main point of the
legend, when they represent the accursed of God as receiv-
ing the boon of death. Goethe had designed to compose an
epic in which he would trace the travels of Ahasuerus, and
would make of him an experienced guide through the regions
of profane history and into the mazes of the history of
religion. But the world has lost little by Goethe’s abandon-
ment of his project ; for little could have been effected in
the premises by one who believed, or, what is worse, affected
to believe, that “ beautiful and healthy nature needs no morals
nor natural law nor political metaphysics ; and one may add
that she needs to take no account of a Deity or of an immor-
tality of the soul ” (1).

* This dissertation appeared In thelAue Maria , Vol. xxxlx.

(1) In a letter to Goethe, his friend Schiller, once a Protestant but then an atheist,

•of these views of the master : “ You are rljrht.”

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' THE LEGEND OP THE WANDERING JEW. 503

The first European author to speak of the legend of the
Wandering Jew was the very unreliable English chronicler
Matthew Paris (often incorrectly designated as Matthew of
Paris), who, writing in the thirteenth century, tells us than
there arrived in England in 1229 an Armenian archbishop,
who gave to the islanders much interesting information con-
cerning the Orient. When asked as to whether he knew any-
thing about a certain “ Joseph ” of whom many strange re-
ports had reached Britain — for instance, that said Joseph
had been among the living at the time of the Saviour, and
had talked with Him, — the prelate replied that he had con-
versed with Joseph, and that what was narrated concerning
the mysterious man was indubitably true. Then, continues
Matthew Paris, the dragoman of the archbishop entered
into some details about Joseph. This strange being had
dined with the prelate, and during the repast had given a
minute account of his life. According to his own words, he
had been a janitor at the time of the Passion, and was called
Calphurnius. He was standing at the door of his house
when Jesus, after His condemnation, was led along the street.
As Our Lord paused a little, Calphurnius struck the Divine
Victim on the back, crying : “ Walk on, Jesus ; walk on ! ”
The Saviour gazed mournfully at the miserable man, and
said : “ I shall walk on, but thou shalt remain until I return.,,
In time Calphurnius was baptized by Ananias, taking the
name of Joseph, and thenceforth he was a homeless wan-
derer over the earth. Once in every century, said the drag-
oman, Joseph falls into sickness, and becomes rejuvenated,
always appearing at the time of recuperation to be thirty
years old, his age when he insulted Our Lord. The next
mention of the Wandering Jew is in the chronicles of the
sixteenth century. According to Dudulseus (1), the records
of that period represent the unfortunate as appearing in
Hamburg in 1547. He was very tall and emaciated, and
in the rags of a beggar. He told several persons that
when Jesus, wishing to rest at his doorway when on the
road to Calvary, paused for a moment, he struck his Lord,

(1) History of a Jew Who , by a Strange Fatality, Has Wandered Since the Time
of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Hamburg. 1684.

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and then heard those fearful words : “ I would have rested
here ; but thou shalt walk until I return.” The involuntary
pilgrim was once accosted by Paul Eizen, afterward bishop
of Schleswig, while he was praying in a church at Hamburg
in 1564 ; and then he called himself Ahasuerus, and seemed
to be about fifty years old (1). Boulenger says that Ahasue-
rus was also known as Gregory and as Buttadeus (2).
Duduheus states that he was seen in Naumburg shortly
after his appearance in Hamburg ; and that he never sat
down, being forced to a continuous walk. The same writer
naively remarks that Ahasuerus made considerable money
by the recital of his experiences. In 1616 his history
and portrait could be bought in Tournay. He is said to
have appeared in England in the early part of the eighteenth
century. Colerus, a lawyer of Lubeck, says that the
wanderer displayed, so far as men could judge, an inti-
mate knowledge of every circumstance of the careers of the
various Apostles ; and that the most learned professors,
with whom he frequently discoursed, were astounded at his
apparently thorough acquaintance with the events, trivial
as well as great, of the past centuries of the Christian era.
In vain did they devise cunning traps in order that he might
be compelled to admit that he was an impostor (3). He
next appeared on the Matterhorn and in France and Hungary.
The narrative of the interview between Eizen and Ahasuerus
is so interesting, that the reader will be pleased with a brief
synopsis (4). The alleged wanderer said that he belonged to
the Tribe of Nephthali ; that his father was a carpenter, and
his mother a seamstress, employed at the Temple of Jeru-
salem in embroidering the vestments of the Levites. He was
born in the year of the world 3962. His father trained him
in a knowledge of the Mosaic Law, and taught him many
wonderful historical facts, which were all narrated in an
immense parchment volume which he had inherited from his

(1) Hf.deck : Story of a Pilgrim Called Ahasuerus. a Jew ir/m Lived at the Time
of the Crucifixion of Christ, and Who is Said to Still Wander. Hamburg. 1681.

(2) 11 Morn of His Times. Paris, 1628.

(•1) See Calmkt ; Biblical Dictionary. Vol. vili. Paris, 1721.

(4) Thilo: History of the Wandering Jew. Wittenberg, 1668.— Schultz ; Dissertation
on the Immortal Jew. Konigsberg. 1668.— Anton : Dissertation in Which the Flimsy
Fable of the Immortal Jew Is Investigated. Helmstadt, 1T-VG.

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ancestors. One of these not generally known facts concerned
the death of Adam. When our first parent felt that he was
about to die, he sent Seth to the entrance of the Garden of
Eden, where the Angel Gabriel stood on guard with a flamiug
sword. Seth was to beg the Angel to allow Adam to look
once more upon Eden. The boy made the request in vain ;
but when he was about to depart Gabriel handed him three
seeds of the Tree of Life, telling liim that when his father
was dead he should place them upon his tongue, and then
bury the body. So it was done ; and over the grave of Adam
soon appeared three beautiful trees, from one of which Moses
took the rod with which he worked such prodigies. In time
these trees were transplanted to Jerusalem, and as a boy
Ahasuerus had often played in their shade. It was from
their wood that the cross of Christ was made. The reader
should know that among the many beautifully ingenious
fancies invented by the vivacious faith of the Middle Age
was that of our Saviour dying on a cross made from the
seed of that tree which was so fatal to the human race, —
from a seed which had matured out of the dust of the mortal
frames of our first progenitors. The idea was carried even
further, our ancestors imagining that the cross was erected
over the grave of Adam and Eve, so that the Sacred Blood
drenched it, and, as it were, vivified the ashes therein con-
tained. As Ahasuerus continued his tale, his hearers were
made acquainted with many details of the mortal life of the
Son of God ; details which in great part he probably took
from the apocryphal Gospels — documents which, though
not inspired, are by no means to be utterly despised by the
historian. According to his story, when Ahasuerus was
nine years old his father told him that he had just heard of
the arrival of three kings from the Orient, who were seeking
for some royal Babe just born, whom they wished to adore.
The boy went to see the kiugs, followed them to the Manger,
and witnessed their adoration of Jesus. The flight of the
Holy Family into Egypt is graphically described. While
on their journey they were once captured by robbers and led
to a cave. They were on the point of being despoiled of
what little property they had, when the Divine Babe smiled

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so sweetly on the evil men that their hearts were touched,
and the leader told the travellers to go in peace. But before
they departed the leader’s wife took the little Jesus and
bathed His sacred limbs ; then when she had performed the
same office for her own child, who had dropsy, she found
the little one suddenly cured. The captain spoke to the
Infant Jesus, saying that he felt that He was more than man,
and he begged Him to pity his miserable life. That robber,
said Ahasuerus, was afterward the Penitent Thief of Calvary.
Many other interesting incidents of the sojourn in Egypt
were narrated ; and if the reader has opportunity to consult
one of the cited works, his curiosity will be well repaid.

When Ahasuerus came to speak of the Passion of Christ,
his hearers trembled with excitement. He gave quite a
minute account of Judas, saying that the wretch had been a
thief and a murderer before he followed our Saviour. 44 I
was standing at my door,” said Ahasuerus, 44 when the crowd
which accompanied Jesus to Calvary approached. I lifted
up my child, that he might have a good look at the Victim.
When Jesus, staggering under the great weight of the cros&,
had arrived in front of us, he stopped as though He would
like to rest * Away with you from my door ! ’ cried I. 4 No
ribald shall rest here.’ Then Jesus directed a sorrowful
glance upon me and said : 4 I go, and shall find repose ; but
thou shalt travel and find no rest Thou shalt walk while the
world is the world ; and then thou shalt behold Me on My
throne at the right hand of My Father, when I judge the twelve
tribes of Israel who are now about to crucify Me.’ I put away
my boy and followed Jesus. The first person whom I met was
Veronica, who was just approaching to wipe the perspiration
from Christ’s holy face. As you know, the imprint of His feat-
ures was fixed upon the towel. Then I saw Mary and other
weeping women. A workman was carrying a hammer and
some nails very near to us, and I seized one of the nails, and
thrusting it directly under the eyes of the Mother of Jesus,
I gloatingly cried : 4 Look, woman ! This is one of the nails
which will fasten thy Son to the cross.’ Then came the
crucifixion.” Ahasuerus narrated its details, and described
the convulsions of nature sympathizing with its outraged

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God. When Christ had expired “ Longinus pierced His side
with a lance, and the Sacred Blood flowed to the ground,
was soaked in, and bathed the ashes of Adam and Eve, who
were there buried.” Ahasuerus now cast a mournful look on
Jerusalem and began his travels. “I knew not whither I
was going ; I crossed high mountains, and could not pause*
Even now, gentlemen, while I am talking to you, I feel as
though I were standing on hot coals. If, by chance, I sit
down for a moment, my legs seem to be moving.” He tells
how he journeyed for an entire century before he saw Jeru-
salem again ; how he yearned for death, for all relatives,
friends, and even acquaintances were gone. He soon started
again on his mournful journey, and ere long he began a
series of attempts to lose his life. He fought in many bat-
tles, receiving thousands of apparently deadly strokes ; but
he could not even be wounded, for “ his body was hard as a
rock and impenetrable by mortal weapon.” Many a time he
suffered shipwreck, but he could not drown : “ he walked on
the waves or floated like a feather.” He sometimes ate, but
he needed no food. He never had serious illness. When
Ahasuerus arose to depart, Eizen offered him money, but he
refused it as something to him entirely superfluous. He
needed no food, he insisted ; and as for shoes and clothes,
they never wore out. That many persons, during the course
of the Christian era, have claimed to be this mysterious in-
dividual is as certain as any fact of history ; but few of the
claimants seem to have so favorably impressed men with an
idea of their veracity as did this Ahasuerus of Wittenberg.
One account says that the bishop of Schleswig was preach-
ing, by invitation of Eizen, afterward his successor in the
cathedral of Wittenberg, when he observed beneath the pul-
pit an old white-bearded man, who struck his breast and
groaned painfully whenever the name of our Saviour was
mentioned. The good prelate, thinking that the poor man
might be in sore need of spiritual succor, sent a servant to
invite him into the episcopal residence after the service.
For a long time the stranger refused to give any account of
himself, but finally he was influenced by the cordiality of
the host ; and joining the company at dinner, he manifested
his identity.

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In 1602 there was issued at Leipsic a popular history of
the Wandering Jew (1), in which it was declared that this
Ahasuerus led the Magi to Bethlehem, that he was well ac-
quainted with St. John the Baptist, that he had talked with
Judas, and that he had helped to make the cross on which
Our Lord was nailed. Quite naturally, among the writers
who speak of this Ahasuerus or Calphurnius there is a great
diversity of opinion as to the genuineness of his claims.
Matthew Paris entertains no doubt of his veracity. Dudu-
lseus, Hedeck, and others of the seventeenth century, show
some hesitancy. Bartholin thinks that the presumed Jew
may have been an emissary of Satan. Boulenger dismisses
the legend with : “ Credat Jndceits Aprtla ; non ego ! ” It
is noteworthy that most of the consideration accorded -to this
legend has been given by very incredulous parties — namely,
German Protestants ; and that the wanderer is said to have
manifested himself in Teutonic lands in every instance but
two. But long before European imaginations began to be
affected by this weird and improbable tale, it had circulated
widely in the East. According to Herbelot, the Arabs of
the seventh century were wont to narrate how, in the sixteenth
year of the Hegira, one of their princes, Fadhil by name,
having penetrated into a lonely valley to perform his devo-
tions, heard each one of his prayers repeated by some invisible
personage. He exclaimed : “ If thou who repeatest my prayers
art an angel, may the favor of Allah remain with thee ! But
if thou art from the Evil One, I want nothing to do with thee !
And if thou art a man, show thyself.” Then there came forth
a venerable, bald-headed man, who appeared to be a dervish,
and who leaned heavily upon a staff. Addressing Fadhil,
this personage said : “ I am Zerib, son of the Prophet Elias.
Jesus Christ ordered me to remain in this life until His second
coming. Even since that day I have been waiting for the
Lord, the Source of every good.” We must here note that
this phrase would indicate that the legend was not of Moham-
medan manufacture ; for no good Islamite could give to
Jesus a title which belongs only to God, since, according to

(1) Wonderful Story of a Jew Bom in Jerusalem , and Called Ahasuerus. Who Pre-
tended to Have Been Present at the Crucifixion of Christ. First Printed in Leyden.

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THE LEGEND OF THE WANDERING JEW.

lis faith, Jesus and His Apostles, like Abraham, were good
Moslems, — that is, children of Islam — the religion of trust
in God. Jesus, according to Mohammed, was the first among
the prophets, and he (Mohammed) continued His work.
Jesus is to come again upon earth, says the Koran ; and
therein the apparition talks like an Islamite, but none save
a Christian would term Jesus the Source of all good. Prob-
ably the Arabs derived the legend from Eastern Christians.
Prince Fadhil is said to have asked when Jesus would come
again upon earth, and Zerib replied : “ When men and
women shall live promiscuously, without distinction of sex ;
when abundance of food does not prevent famine ; when the
blood of innocents shall be shed ; when the poor beg and re-
ceive no alms ; when mercy shall have vanished from the
earth ; when the Sacred Scriptures shall be set to music ;
when the temples of the One and True God shall be filled
with idols.” If any of our readers credit this legend, they
will probably find in the prophecy of Zerib an indication
that the days of Antichrist are already upon us. At any rate,
the Arabs found in the prediction a description of the time
when the Last Judgment would be imminent. It is strange,
however, that gross as Mohammedan ignorance was then,
and has ever been, it was not perceived that the story of
Zerib asserted an anachronism in its assignment of a son of
Elias to the time of Christ. But such wTas the legend of the
Wandering Jew as it w’as credited in the East twelve cen-
turies ago. That the story was accepted by many Christians
rs well founded in its essential features, is not at all surpris-
ing ; for probably it was regarded, when it first originated, as a
mere allegory, illustrative of the condition of the Jewish people
since their final dispersion — scattered over the earth, deprived
of their national existence, and immovably obstinate in their
rejection of Christianity. In Joseph, Ahasuerus and Zerib
was recoguized the J e wish race, bearing the consequences of
their self-imprecation : “ His Blood be upon us and upon our
children!” Destined to subsist, as testimonies to Christ
and His Church, until time is no more, the Jews, according
to some Fathers, are to be reconciled with God at the end of
the world. Ahasuerus, therefore, was represented as ex-

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

pecting the end of his punishment to arrive when Jesus would
ascend His judgment throne. To us, and probably to most
Christians, the most interesting point to be debated in
this legend is the implication that the Jewish people, as the
end of the world approaches, will recognize Jesus as their
Messiah and their God.

CHAPTER ni

THE ALLEGED IDOLATRY OF POPE ST. MARCELLINUS.

Writing to the Emperor Michael in the year 865, Pope
Nicholas I. said : “ In the reign of the sovereigns Diocletian
and Maximian, Marcellinus, Bishop of the city of Rome,
who afterward became an illustrious martyr, was so per-
secuted by the Pagans that he entered one of their temples,
and there offered incense. Because of this act, an inquiry
was held by a number of bishops in Council, and the Pontiff
confessed his fall.” Platina amplifies the reputed fact with
these details : “ When Pope Marcellinus was threatened by
the executioners, he yielded to fear, offered incense to the
idols, and adored them. But when, soon afterward, a Coun-
cil of 180 bishops met in Sinuessa, a city of Terra di Lavoro,
Marcellinus appeared in the assembly clothed in sackcloth^
and begged the synodals to impose upon him a penance, be-
cause of his infidelity. But no member of the Council dared
to condemn him, all declaring that St. Peter had sinned
similarly, and had merited pardon by his tears ” (1). Bel-
larmine admits the sin of St. Marcellinus, and the demand
for pardon at Sinuessa, contenting himself with a refutation
of the conclusions drawn by heretics from the presumed
fact (2). And also Baronio, although he had been the first
to question the genuineness of the Ads of Sinuessa, and
consequently the truth of the charge against St. Marcel-
linus, thought that he served the cause of historical truth
when, in his second edition, he said of the arguments which
militated for the innocence of the Pontiff : “ Although they

(1» Lives of the Pontiffs. Venice, 1674.

(2) Roman Pontiff , Bk. II., ch. 36 ; iv., 6 and 8.

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appear to be weighty, we do not find them sufficiently strong
to demonstrate the entire falsity of the Acts” And strange
to say, even the Bollandists, although they afterward changed
their opinion (1), at one time averred the weakness of the
Pontiff (2). When such Catholic authorities as these en-
couraged them, it is not strange that the rank and file
of Protestant polemics, beginning with the Centuriators
of Magdeburg, exultantly proclaimed the idolatry of St.
Marcellinus, especially as they regarded the alleged fall as
an argument against Papal Infallibility ; being unaware, or
perhaps feigning not to know, that this special prerogative
of the Roman See does not imply any personal impeccability
on the part of the Pontiff. However, one of the most em-
inent of these Protestant polemics, Samuel Basnage, having
perceived that the guilt of St. Marcellinus could be evinced
only by an acceptation of the Acts of Sinucssa as genuine,
was constrained by a fear of the teachings of those Acts to
denounce the incriminating story as a mere fable. The pre-
sumed Acts had declared that “ The first See can be judged
by no one ” — a doctrine which the zealous Protestant rec-
ognized as much more to be feared by the children of the
Reformation than an unwilling admission of the innocence
of the accused Pontiff ; therefore he reluctantly avowed :
“ The story is a fable ; the Acts of Sinucssa are also fab-
ulous ” (3).

Among Catholic authors who have combatted the gen-
uineness of the Acte of Sinuessar and who therefore have
denied the idolatry of St. Marcellinusr the first place must
be accorded to the illustrious Gallican historian, Noel
Alexandre, whose natural predilections could not prevent
him from discerning the contradictions and absurdities pre-
sented in the Acte of Sinuessa. That other eminent cory-
phee of Gallicanism, Claude Fleuryy is silent in the matter ;
therefore as it was the interest of his school to make known
every instance of Pontifical weakness, we may conclude that
this historian also discredited the melancholy story. Amat
de Graveson deems the tale “ a badly constructed fable ” (4).

(1) When treating of the month of May. (2) At April 26.

(3) Politico-Ecclesiastical Annate. Amsterdam. 1692.

(4) Ecclesiastical History , Dialogue ii. on Cent. V. Venice, 1761.

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Cardinal Noris (1), Francis Anthony Zaccaria (2), Cardinal
Orsi (3), and Audisio (4), find that it does not stand the test
of historical criticism. Why the more recent Catholic his-
torians, Palma and Alzog, should have ignored the question
is incomprehensible ; but a still later Catholic scholar of
eminence, the late Cardinal Galimberti, while he was filling
the chair of Ecclesiastical History in the Urban College of
the Propaganda, published an exhaustive monogram in
which he may be said to have pronounced the last word in
defence of Pope Marcellinus (5), clearly evincing that
throughout the whole of his career the Pontiff was integer
vitce, scelerisque purus. Certainly none of the writers of the

fourth and fifth centuries have any words of condemnation
for this saint ; whereas, on the contrary, Theodoret (386-457)
expressly qualifies him as “ one who was illustrious under
persecution — eum qai persecutionis tempore inclaruit ” (6).
Are we to suppose that Theodoret would have assigned
fidelity under persecution as a characteristic of a pontificate
which had unfaithfulness for its most striking feature ? And
how is it that no contemporary or quasi-contemporary of our
Pontiff even alludes to an event which, from its very nature,
was of transcendent interest to Christendom, if .it had really
happened ? Not a word of this accusation was heard until
the Donatists, like all heretics, wishing to debase the au-
thority which had striken them with anathema, declared that
Pope Melchiades was not to be obeyed, because he had re-
ceived Orders from the Pope Marcellinus “ who had fallen in-
to idolatry.” To this calumny St. Augustine replied : “ What
necessity is there for refuting the incredible calumnies which
he (Petilianus) urges against the bishops of the Roman See ?
He charges that Marcellinus and his priests, Melchiades,
Marcellus, and Sylvester, were wicked and sacrilegious men,
who had delivered the holy books (to the persecutors), and

(1) History of the Donatists. Venice, 1690.

(2) Collection of Dissertations on Ecclesiastical History. Rome, 1790. Anti-Feb-
bronio. Pesaro, 1767.

(8) Ecclesiastical History , Bk. ii., eta. 41. Rome, 1746.

(4) Religious and Civil History of the Ptipes. Rome, 1880.

(5) Apology for Pope Marcellinus. Rome, 1876.

(6) “ Sylvester was the successor of that Mtltiades who ruled the Church after that Mar-
cellinus who was illustrious under persecution .” Ecclesiastical History , Bk. i., ch. 8.

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THE ALLEGED IDOLATRY OF POPE ST. MARCELLINUS. 513

had offered incense (to the idols). I reply that these men
xoere innocent ; and why should I work to prove the truth
of my assertion, when he has not tried in the least to support
his accusation ? ” (1). Again, the most ancient documents
adduced in proof of the idolatry of St. Marcellinus seem to
bear upon their face evidence of their unreliability in this
matter — evidence, that is, of interpolation. These doc-
uments are the Pontifical Book and its probable parent, the
Second Catalogue of the Popes , in both of which we read :
“ Marcellinus was led to a temple, and ordered to offer in-
cense ; and he complied. But after a few days, he repented,
and was beheaded for the faith of Christ by the same Dio-
cletian.” Now, as Bencini observes in his commentary on
Anastasius the Librarian, whom some mediaeval writers
credited with the authorship of the Pontifical Book , Diocle-
tian could not have been in Rome at the time of the martyr-
dom of St. Marcellinus. Relying on the testimony of Lac-
tantius, who was “ probably at that time in Rome,” Bencini
finds that Diocletian came to Rome for the vicenncdia which
were to be celebrated on the Twelfth of the Kalends of
Decern ber, 303 ; and that “ when the vicennalia had been
celebrated, Diocletian, unable to bear the arrogance of the
Roman people, suddenly rushed from the city just before the
Kalends of January, when the consulate was to be re-ten-
dered to him. This circumstance not having been remem-
bered by the inventor of the guilt of Marcellinus, he ruined
the value of his Acts of Sinuessa ” — that is, since it is certain
that St. Marcellinus received his palm on April 26, 304, he
could not have been condemned by an emperor who was not
in Rome. However, it is not improbable that the arrest
and execution of the Pontiff might have been effected by the
orders of even an absent emperor ; therefore we abandon
this line of argument, and turn our attention to the question
of the genuineness of the Acts of Sinuessa , upon the solution
of which depends absolutely and entirely that of the guilt or
innocence of St. Marcellinus.

(1; “ Ego innocentes fuisse responded. Quidlaborem probar e defensionem mcam,
cum Me riec tenuiter probare conatus sit accusatiomm suam t ” In book on One Bap-
tism,, ch. 16.

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Who can believe, if he is conversant with the circumstances
of Christendom during the reign of Diocletian, that a Coun-
cil of 180 bishops, as Platina alleges, or of 300, as The Acts of
Sinuessa pretend, could have met in any city of the empire ?
Even at the Council of Nice, when peace had been given to
the Church, when her prelates and priests w ere protected
and aided by the imperial authority, only 308 synodals an-
swered to their names. Elsewhere we have descanted on the
horrors and the universality of the persecution under Dio-
cletian (1) ; here let it suffice to say with Lactantius : “ The
entire world was tormented ; from East to West three fero-
cious beasts hunted for prey . . . the emperor (Diocletian)
raged not only against his own household, but against alL
. . . Priests and assistants wrere seized, and without trial were

led to execution Persons of every age and sex wrere

thrust into the flames, not merely one at a time, for so great
was the multitude that they were collected into a heap, and
fire built around them ” (2). It has been said that bishops
from Africa might easily have crossed for a Council into Italy mr
but we know from Optatus of Milevi that “ the tempest raged
through the whole of Africa, making martyrs of some, con-
fessors of others ” (3). And if African bishops wrent, in any
number, how comes it that no memory of such a Council
subsisted in Africa in the days of St. Augustine, when there
certainly lived many, whose fathers had been contemporary
with the great assembly ? Many historians, among whom it
seems strange to perceive Baronio, Pagi, and Basnage, find
an argument against the genuineness of the Acts of Sitatessa
in a supposition that such a city as Sinuessa never existed ;
but unfortunately for one wTho would expect to solve the
present question in summary style, the existence of Sinuessa
is known by every careful student of Livy and of Martial (4),
and Ughelli demonstrates that it wras an episcopal city, two
of its bishops, whom he identifies, having been crowmed wdth

(1) In our Vol. i.. p. 56, et scqq. (2) Deaths of the Persecutors, ch. 19, et scqq.

(3) Against Parmenian, Bk. I.

(4) Livy tells us (Bk. X., ch. 21) that the city of Sinope, a Greek foundation, Faltrnum
conti agent e agrum, was termed Sinuessa by the Romans ; and Strabo (Bk. V.) says that
the latter name was Riven to it because it was in the heart, f?» sina, of the Vescino.
Martial praises the wine of Sinuessa in his Bk. Xlll Epigram 3.

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THE ALLEGED IDOLATRY OF POPE 8T. MARCELLINUS. 515

martyrdom (1). However, as Galimberti remarks, if ge-
ography does not condemn the Acts of Sinuessa , chron-
ology will effect the purpose. The presumed Acts assert :

“ While Diocletian was engaged in the Persian War, he heard
that 300 bishops, thirty priests, and three deacons, had
united in the one condemnation ; and that Marcellinus him-
'self, first of all, agreed in his own anathematization by his
own subscription to the decree. Then Diocletian became
furious, and sent (officers) to that city. . . and Marcellinus
was condemned suojudicio on the Tenth of the Kalends of
September.” Now it is certain, firstly, that Maximian, not
Diocletian, then ruled at Rome and in the contiguous regions ;
secondly, that all the ancient Martyrologies contradict the ‘
assertion that Marcellinus was condemned in September ;
and thirdly, which at once subverts the authority of the Acts ,
that the Persian War had been terminated either in 301 or
in 302, two years or thereabout before the alleged idolatry,
the alleged anathematization, and the martyrdom of St.
Marcellinus. How could Diocletian have “ raged against
Marcellinus,” arrested, and condemned him, while the em-
peror “ was engaged in the Persian War,” since, according
to Eusebius, it was only after that war that the sovereigns,
having met in Nicomedia, issued the decree of persecution
which overwhelmed our Pontiff? This anachronism alone
must suffice to prove that the Acts of Sinuessa are forgeries ;
but it will be interesting and profitable to examine the ab-
surdities, of which they are redolent — absurdities which
caused Le Nain de Tillemont to say : “ The way in which

Marcellinus talks in these Acts ; the lie that he utters when
he denies his crime, and the terms that he uses when he con-
fesses that crime ; are all less like the lamentations of a
sincere penitent, than they are like the foolish excuses of a
schoolboy who is about to be whipped.”

The following are the words with which the presumed
Acts describe the alleged crime of our Pontiff : “ Then Dio-

cletian deemed it prudent to shower blandishments on Mar-
cellinus ; and his caressing language succeeded so well, that
he was able to lead the Pontiff to the Temple of Vesta.

(1) These bishops wi re Sts. Castus and Secundlnus. Sacred Italy. Venice, 1717.

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He was accompanied by two deacons, Caius and Innocentius ;
and by three priests, Urbanus, Castorius, and Juvenalis.
When these had seen Marcellinus enter the temple, but be-
fore he had offered incense, they went away, and proceeding
to the Vatican, they informed their priestly colleagues as to
what they had seen. In the meantime, many Christians
who had entered the temple, in order to see what was being
done, beheld Marcellinus offering incense.” And this
pontifical renegade, succumbing to an oily tongue, is the
“ Marcellinus who was illustrious under persecution ” ; the
same who “ confirmed the faith of the soldiers of the
Theban Legion, so that they might rather die under the
sword, than deny the holy faith of Christ which they had
embraced ! ” (1). But can we believe that in the height of
the persecution of Diocletian, many Christians left their
biding-places, and visited a pagan temple, the home of
“ those false gods who were demons,” in order to witness
a denial of the faith by one of themselves ? All of those Chris-
tians, whom the inventor of the Acts of Simiessa represents
as yielding to a curiosity “ to see what was being done ” in
one of the sanctuaries of the foul deities whom they both
contemned and hated, proclaimed with Tertullian : “ If we
keep our throats and stomachs clean, how much more
should we keep far from our eyes and ears all idolatrous
pleasures — tilings that are not merely taken into our intes-
tines, but are digested in our very souls, the cleanliness of
which God desires more than that of our bodies ? ” (2). But
listen to the Acts as they present what purports to be a
Chapter on “ The Synod, and the Denial of His Idolatry by
Marcellinus ” : “ The synod met, but all the clergy had not
assembled, because of the persecution then in vigor. Marcel-
linus having entered, he denied that he had offered incense.”
We are not told the authority by which this synod was called.
And why is a stress laid on the absence of many because
• of the persecution? Certainly, if there were 300 bishops
present, it was a very respectable convention. But how did
'those 300 prelates, from so many interdistant dioceses, man-
age to travel safely in that direful time ? Then we hear :

(1) Bollandists ; Acts of the Saints , at Sept. 22. (2) On Spectacles, ch. 13.

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THE ALLEGED IDOLATRY OP POPE ST. JCARCELLINUS. 517

44 Fourteen witnesses entered, and said : “We saw tliee
(Marcellinus) offering incense to Hercules, Jupiter, and
Saturn.” The forger showed in this passage that he knew
nothing about the pagan liturgy ; for the temple in question
was dedicated to Vesta, and no worship of other deities
would have been tolerated in it. “ When was it,” the Pon-
tiff is represented as asking the witnesses, “ that you saw
me offering incense?” The reply is given as : “ On the
day when you discarded your purple garments, and donned
scarlet ones, Diocletian thereupon rejoicing.” If the read-
er believes that in that day, and even in a time of persecu-
tion, a Roman Pontiff wore distinctive robes of purple, he
will not smile at this passage. We are told that when con-
jured to reply truly to his accusers, Marcellinus protested :
“ I did not sacrifice to the gods ; 1 simply placed some grains
of incense on the fire.” Can it be supposed that a Roman
Pontiff, a priest necessarily acquainted with the story of
Ezechiel and the prohibited food, would proffer such a puer-
ile explanation to an assembly of three hundred Christian
prelates? Finally, say the Acts , when the Pontiff was
exhorted to judge in his own cause — “ thou shalt be con-
demned by your own judgment, not by ours,” he threw
himself on the ground, and : “ As he remained there pros-
trate and hesitating, they condemned him.” Then it is
said that soon afterward “ Marcellinus, Bishop of the city
of Rome, exclaimed in a loud voice : 4 1 have sinned in your
sight, and I ought not to remain in the priestly order (?),
for I have been corrupted by gold ’ ; whereupon they signed
his condemnation, and expelled him from the city. Bishop
Melchiades was the first to sign this condemnation ; and he
said in a clear voice : 4 He has been condemned justly

by his own mouth. .. for the first See will never be judged
by any one' ” And nevertheless, according to the Acts
fhe bishop of bishops was judged by liis inferiors, and was
44 expelled from the city. ” No wonder that Tillemont could
not understand how it is that these pretended Acts of
Sinuessa have been allowed to retain a position among the
received Acts of the Councils . Concluding our examination
of the absurdities of the composer of these supposititious.

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Acts, we must note that the phrase “ the First See is judged
•by no one,” a:; purporting to be uttered by one of the
members of the alleged Sinuessan Synod, would indicate
that the synodals were very bad theologians, since they tacit-
ly, at least, approved a doctrine which, according to their
hypothesis, would be false and absurd. That the decisions
of the Holy See in matters of doctrine are per se irrefoi'ma -
biles, and therefore “ to be judged by no one ” in other than
a spirit of obedience, is a matter of faith ; but it is false that
in an hypothesis like that asserted to have been verified in
a synod at Sinuessa, a Roman Pontiff “ could be judged by
no one.” Of course we hold with Bellarmine and the
majority of theologians that “it is probable, and may
piously be believed, that even as a private person the Roman
Pontiff cannot be a heretic, obstinately teaching anything
contrary to faith ” (1). But if we were able to suppose, as
the presumed Sinuessan Synod was said to have supposed,
that a Pontiff could fall into apostasy, then certainly we
would be obliged to admit that such a Pontiff could be
subjected to an inquiry as to the fact . That three hundred
bishops could advance the contrary theory, and at the very
moment when they “ condemned Marcellinus, and expelled
him from the city,” we must refuse to believe.

But we are asked to remember that the Boman Breviary
explicitly records the idolatry of St. Marcellinus. This
objection can be seriously adduced only by one who is unac-
quainted with the nature of the Breviary. As Pope Gela-
sius observed, the Church does not present the lives of the
saints, which are sketched in th§ Breviary, “ as a Gospel.”
The same Pontiff tells us to “ examine all (the presumed
facts), and to hold to what is correct ” ; and his advice was
reasonable, for, as all ought to know, the historical features
of the Breviai'y, being based on human, not on divine faith,
can properly be made subjects of historical criticism. Sev-
eral Pontiffs, notably St. Pius V., Clement VIII., Urban VIII.,
and Benedict XIV.. reformed the text of this monumental
work ; they all understood, as all future Pontiffs will under-
stand, that historical assertions in the Breviary have no

(D The Roman Pontiff , Bk. iv., ch. 6.

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THE ALLEGED" IDOLATRY OF POPE ST. MARCELLINUS. 519

more value tlian that possessed by the sources from which
they are derived. That pre-eminently learned and judicious
Pope, Benedict XIV., speaking of the authority of the Brevi-
ary, says : “ It is thought that Pope Nicholas III. (1277-1280)
finally decreed that in all the churches in the city of Home
those Offices should be recited, and those books read, which
the Franciscans were accustomed to use ; and that all the
more ancient Offices and Books of Chant should be there-
after proscribed. . . . Gavanti (1), speaking of the Roman
Breviary as we now have it, gives us in his already-men-
tioned work ( The Lessons) an account of the corrections of the
Lessons in the Second Nocturn which were made by Car-
dinals Baronio and Bellarmine in the time of Clement VIIL ;
-and he testifies to the difficulty experienced in reforming
those Lessons concerning the saints according to the de-
mands of historical truth, and with the least possible change.
He even admits that certain legends of the saints, which
good historians pronounce inexact and perhaps without good
foundation, were generally retained, becafise of the possibil-
ity that they might be true. . . . Although it may safely be
asserted that an insertion in the Roman Breviary gives no
little weight to historical narratives, nevertheless, it must
not be thought that there is any prohibition against laying
before the Apostolic See any historical difficulties (in refer-
ence to those narratives), in order that said difficulties may
be considered, whenever another correction of the Breviary
is undertaken ” (2). It is evident, therefore, that when we
consider the positive auguments which militate for the inno-
cence of St. Marcellinus, the contrary testimony of the Roman
Breviary is not necessarily to be received. We must say of
the credulity of the compilers of the Breviary what Pape-
broch remarked concerning that which Pope Nicholas I. dis-
played in his letter to Emperor Michael : “ He alleged in
good faith a report which was regarded as true in his
time.” It may be noted, however, that this is not the sole
historical error committed by Nicholas I. in the same letter.
He speaks of a Roman Council having been convened by

fl) See our Vol. tv., p. 49.

(2) Canonization of Saints , Pt. il., Bk. tv., cb. 13. Rome, 1747.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

Pope Xystus III. for the purpose of judging Polychronius,
bishop of Jerusalem ; and both Baronio and Papebroch dem-
onstrate that no such bishop of Jerusalem ever existed.
The same remark as to inculpable credulity might be made
in regard to the author of the Second Catalogue or Ponti-
fical Book , a work which is ascribed to the sixth century
— to a period two centuries later than the questioned event—
by nearly all erudite chronologists, notably by Papebroch,
Pearson, and Dodwell ; but the innocence of this author
becomes problematical, when we reflect on the absurdities
which he utters, and on the silence of the First Catalogue —
a more ancient work which he must have read— concerning
any guilt of St. Marcellinus.

CHAPTER IV.

CONSECRATED VIRGINS AMONG THE EARLY CHRISTIANS.

In the very first days of the infant Church we find fol-
lowers of that state of perfection which Our Lord had chos-
en for Himself and for His Mother. Virginity was the por-
tion of some of the apostles, absolute continency of all. The
ancient records show us SS. Peter and Paul receiving the
vow of chastity from St. Petronilla ; St. Matthew from St
Ipliigene, and St. Clement from Flavia Domitilla. Not a
Father of the Church fails to show his admiration of those
who are “to follow the Lamb wherever He goetli.” St
Ignatius, fresh from the instructions of the virgin St John,
tells the people of Tarsus to “ honor the virgins who are
consecrated to Christ.” St. Justin sings the praises of those
who have grown old in voluntary celibacy. St. Cyprian de-
clares “ that the greater the number of virgins, the greater
the joy of the Church.” And so tenderly did the early
Church cherish these imitators of Mary, that, as a rule, they
were supported by ecclesiastical funds. Some writers, fol-
lowing St. Athanasius, ascribe the first cloister to a sister of
St. Anthony, about the year 313 ; and they insist that be-
fore Constantine gave peace to the Church, all the sacred

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CONSECRATED VIRGINS AMONG THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 521

virgins lived in the world, although, of course, not “ of it.”
But there is good reason for the assertion that, at least in .
Syria and Mesopotamia, cloisters were known before the
fourth century. Tertullian (160-245) and St. Cyprian (d. 258)
are cited by Balto, in his Preface to the Acts of St. Febronia ,
as alluding to such establishments (1). And St Eplirem
(d. 379) speaks of them as having existed in his country
long before his day. But the Acts of St. Febronia , as tran-
scribed in the Martyrology of the Western Church, in the
Greek Menology , in the Calendars of the Copts and of the
Muscovites, would remove all doubt in the matter. These
authentic Acts tell us that when Silenus, Lis}rmachus, and
Primus, fulfilling the command of Diocletian, in 304, to pun-
ish all Christians with death, had arrived at Sibapolis in
Assyria, they there found “ a monastery of fifty women under
the government of Bryene, who had hitherto followed the rule
assigned them by one Plato, a deacon.” However, it seems
certain that cloisters were unknown in the West during the
days of pagan persecution ; then our religious resided at
home, carefully avoiding all worldly amusements, and sub-
ject, so far as circumstances permitted, to what we call a
“ rule.” Writing to the virgin Eustochia, St. Jerome says :

“ May the intimate privacy of thy chamber protect thee !
May thy Spouse ever rejoice in thy heart ! When thou pray-
est, thou speakest to thy Spouse ; when thou readest, He
talks to thee. All of you know well the Hours — Prime,
Tierce, Sext, None, and Vespers. Twice or thrice a night
thou must arise and recall to thy mind the lessons of Script-
ure. Leaving home, let prayer arm thee; returning, at
once prayer must meet thee.” As to the obligation of per-
severance on the part of these consecrated virgins, the Coun-
cil of Elvira (2) decreed, in its thirteenth canon, that a vio-
lation of their vow should entail a denial of Communion even
at the hour of death.

With the triumph of Constantine came that of Christianity ;
and just as magnificent basilicas took the place of hidden
and often subterranean churches, so the system of the clois-

U) Tertullian ; On the Veiling of Virgin#.— St. Cyprian ; Discipline of Virgins.

(2) This Council was probably held In 324, but some writers assign It to tbe year 252.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

ter replaced the independent religious life. Palladius, writ-
ing at the end of the fourth century, says that Pacomius
built a convent for his sister on the bank of the Nile op-
posite his own monastery ; that while the latter counted four-
teen hundred monks, the former sheltered four hundred
nuns (1). St Basil built many convents, and drew up a rulo
for their inmates. In the Thebaid the Abbot Elias directed
three hundred virgins ; and in the city of Ossirintum, says
Kufinus, there were twenty thousand (2). The delicate la-
dies of Home seem to have shown, at first, but little inclina-
tion for the severe life of the cloister. Most of its votaries
were for a time from the lower classes ; indeed, we learn from
St. Jerome that St. Paula so far yielded to the prejudices
of her noble subjects as to locate the others, unless when at
prayer, in separate buildings (3). But very soon the ex-
ample of Marcella and her daughter affected ladies of even the
highest rank, and the aristocracy gave more than a reason-
able quota of its daughters to the holy level of convent dis-
cipline. At the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-
604) the number of cloistered women in Borne was so large,
that during a period of scarcity of food, the Pontiff himself
fed and clothed more than three thousand (4). Just as in
our day, parents were accustomed to confide the education
of their daughters to the care of religious. Writing from
Bethlehem, St. Jerome earnestly advises Leta, a widow, to
send even an infant to the care of Paula, over whose convent
the holy doctor exercised supervision : “ Try not to bear a
burden which is too great for you, but so soon as you have
weaned her, let her be consigned to the monastery ; let her
live in a virginal choir, knowing not the world. ... If you
send her to Paula, I promise to be her teacher and her
guardian. I will carry her on my shoulders, and my age will
direct her hesitating words.” Many of these girls were des-
tined by their parents (if they afterward should deem them-

(1) Lamiac History. ( 2 ) Lives of the Fathers , Bk. i., cb. 5.

(3) Plures virgines , quas c divers is provinciis enngregarot , tam nob He, quam medii
et infimi generis, in tres turmas monasteriaque divisit , dumtaxat ita ut in opere et
in cibo separatee , psalmodiis ct orationibus jungerentur. . . umimqnodquc agmen
mat rent proptiam sequebatur .” Thus in bis letter to Eustochla on tbe epitaph of
Paula.

(4) Bk. vl.. letter 23.

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CONSECRATED VIRGINS AMONG THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 523

•selves so called) to the conventual life, and their training
was accordingly directed with that view.

Religious profession was allowed at sixteen (1) ; but St.
Jerome says that his friend Asella made her profession at
ten (2). Consecration, which corresponded to the solemn
or definitive jirofession of our day, was given only at twenty-
five, as we learn from the 26th canon of the Third Council of
Carthage, held in 397. The age at which a nun might be
made an abbess wras put at sixty by St. Basil ; but the Coun-
cils of Chalcedon and Trullo deemed . forty a sufficient guar-
antee of prudence. St. Gregory the Great, writing to the
bishop of Syracuse, said : “We absolutely prohibit the ap-
pointment of young abbesses; Your Fraternity will appoint
only such as are sixty years old.” This requirement of
very advanced age was extended at one time even to a conse-
cration. St. Leo L, having learned that certain cruel parents
forced their daughters to take the veil, decreed in 458
that no religious should be invested before the age of forty ;
but in the course of time the age of twenty-five was re-estab-
lished, to remain until the twelfth century, when twenty be-
came customary. It was quite natural that all these women,
whether members of the cloister or consecrated to a partic-
ular service of God at home, should adopt some distinctive
dress, while, of course, they abandoned all garments which
might savor of vanity, however harmless. The latter gener-
ally wore clothing of wool and of a dark color ; the former,
owing to the variety of institutes, in time came to present as
many different uniforms as they formed families. But there
was one distinctive mark for all religious women, which dat-
ed at least from the fourth century, and, with the exception
of a very few modern Congregations (3), they have always
worn it — the veil. Even Tertullian seems to allude to this
vesture when he says: “True and entire virginity fears
nothing more than itself ; it cannot bear the eyes even of
women, and retires under its veil as behind a shield which
protects its treasure ” (4). St. Jerome speaks of those who,

(1) Basil; To AmphUochius , epist. 2. (2) To MarccUa.

(3) Thus, the Sisters of Charity have no veil. When their founder, St. Vincent de Paul,
was interrogated on this point, he replied : “ Their virtues will be their veils.”

(41 Roc. cit.— Among the Orientals, unmarried females never went out unveiled. We

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STUDIE8 IN CHURCH HISTORY.

“ when they swear to preserve their virginity, hide their feat-
ures under a dark mantle.”

Although the veil was often assumed without ceremony, it
was frequently blessed and solemnly imposed by the bishop ;
thus, St. Jerome exhorts Demetrias to perseverance in her
obligations, assumed when “ the prayer of the Pontiff laid
the virginal insignia on her head.” This solemn profession
at the hands of a bishop was, in the first centuries, always
made on a principal feast ; thus, St. Ambrose, in his elegant
exhortation to virgins, says : “ The Paschal day has arrived,
and all over the world the Sacrament of Baptism is
conferred, and virgins receive the veil.” And Pope Gelasius
(492), writing to the bishops of what is now Portugal, men-
tions Christmas, the Epiphany, and Low Sunday as days
wThen “ especially the veil is to be given by bishops. ° In
the course of time this ceremony was peformed also on Sun-
days and on anniversaries of Our Lady and of the martyrs.
Catalani shows that the bishop usually pronounced an appro-
priate discourse on the occasion (1). Sometimes, but only in
very extraordinary circumstances, the Supreme Pontiff en-
hanced the solemnity of the function by himself officiating ;
thus, as St. Ambrose informs us, on a Christmas Day, Pope
Liber ius gave the veil to his sister Marcellina in the Vatican
Basilica (2). In the days of St Jerome, and in Home, the
religious veil was of purple, and the saint explains the mys-
tic sense of the color : “ The sacred virgins invest their hair
with sobriety, modesty, and continence, as well as with the
entire company of the virtues ; and, covered by the veil pur-
pled with the blood of Our Lord, they show His mortifica-

read of Rebecca (Genesis, xxiv. 65) that when she saw Isaac, her future husband, from a
distance, she covered herself with her veil. On the contrary, the ancient Roman girls
showed their faces in public, while the married women were veiled ; in fact, the primitive
meaning of nultere (to marry) was to veil one’s self. The privilege, of course, pleased the
young women ; but the severe Tertullian condemned them for availing themselves of it
in church, and it was with this object that he composed his treatise. The Veiling of
Virgins. He was told that the privilege was appropriate to the candor of innocence, and
that, when the virgins were seen to be thus unique in church, they invited others to Ima-
tatethem. But he nnswered that where there was complacency there camb vanity.
Interest, constraint, weakness : and a constrained virginity was a source of crime.

(1) Commentary on the Pontifieal Bt>ok , title 19.

(2) Benedict XIV. (1740-58) gave the veil to one of the Colonna princesses, and delivered
on the occasion one of his most erudite and majestic sermons. We have met with,
no more modern instance of such i>ontl Ileal action.

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CONSECRATED VIRGINS AMONG THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 525

tions in their own frames” (1). St. Optatus of Milevi says
that there was no precept as to the material of the purple
veil (2). Generally, however, the veil was black. In some
places, as is shown in the learned dissertation by the Bene-
dictine (St. Maur) Anthony Mege, published in 1689, there
were eight different veils : 1. The veil of probation, given to

any one who asked for it ; 2. That of reception, for novices,
and this was white ; 3. That of profession, which was red ; 4
That of consecration, blessed by the bishop, and given only
to virgins ; 5. That of “ ordination,” so termed, given to
deaconesses on their appointment ; 6. That of “ prelacy ” or
authority, for abbesses ; 7. That of continence, for widows ; 8.
That of penance, for any religious who had been guilty of
grave scandal. As to cutting the hair of a novice, it was not in
vogue in some places, but in others it was customary from time
immemorial ; the operation was performed by the superior-
ess. From the Acts of St . Saturninus and His Companions ,
and from many other testimonies adduced by Martene (3),
we learn that the first religious did not cut their tresses,
but wore them hidden.

And now a few remarks as to the order of “ deaconesses ”
— women consecrated to the service of the Church, who, al-
though known even in Apostolic days (4), have not been seen
in the West since the twelfth century, nor in the East since
the thirteenth. But in very modern times the Ambrosian
rite provides for asimiliar organization of matrons — vetulo -
nes, — who furnish the bread and wine for the Sacrifice (5).
It was the duty of the deaconesses to perform toward females
those offices at baptism, then conferred by immersion, which
the deacons fulfilled toward men ; to act as vergers or bead-
les in that part of the church assigned to women ; to visit
the poor and sick of their own sex ; and, when circumstances
would not allow a deacon to do so, to strengthen by exhor-
tation the courage of the women during persecution (6).

(1) The Institute of Virgins. (2) Against the Donatists.

(3) Ancient Rites of the (hureh .*

(4) Si. Paul speaks of them in the Epistle to the Romans ; aud Pliny the Younger,
writing to Trajan, says that he has put two ministras to the torture.

(5) Mackr ; Hierolerieon. art. Deaconesses.

(6) Balsamon ; canon 2 of the Council of Laodlcea.— Assemani ; Oriental Library , VoL
<?!„ eh. 13.

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8TUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

The Council of Trullo, in the year 692, uses the word c/iei-
rotonein (to impose hands) in speaking of the consecration
of deaconesses ; however, it is certain that such “ imposition ”
was not Sacramental, but merely ceremonial, for the Nine-
teenth Canon of the Nicene Council expressly places these
women among laics. At first the deaconesses were widows
who had been married but once, and their reception as dea-
conesses was an impediment to a second marriage ; in time,
as is shown by Zonaras and Balsamon, virgins also were en-
rolled. The modern Greeks, both the United and the Schis-
matic, give the name of deaconesses to the wives of their dea-
cons, but these have no office in the Church. The same is to
be noted of those women who are sometimes mentioued dur-
ing the early Christian centuries as priestesses, bishopesses,
etc. (1) ; they were separated wives of men who had become
priests, etc., and they are specially denominated laics by
Pope So ter (175). These were bound to a life of continual
prayer and mortification, and were excommunicated if they
broke their vows.

In the olden time, female religious were often styled “ can-
onesses,” because their lives were arranged by the ecclesi-
astical Canons (2). But they were very different from the
aristocratic “ canonesses ” of the Middle Ages, and from those
who are to be found to-day in the Empire of Austria. These
women are not, properly speaking, religious ; for, the abbess
alone excepted, they are bound by no vows. All necessarily
being of noble, and often of imperial blood, their retirement is
frequently only temporary ; but so long as they remain in the
convent, they are bound to the Divine Office and many exer-
cises of piety, and in the choir they wear the robes of “ can-
onesses. ” In 816 the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle prescribed
for them a somewhat severe rule, founded on the prescrip-
tions of SS. Cyprian, Jerome, and Athanasius ; thus, it obliged
them to chastity, and, while it allowed them servants, it
compelled them to make their own clothes. But in the thir-
teenth century the canonesses ceased to observe these rules,

(1) Thus the second Council of Tours, can. 20, says: “ Si inventus fucrit presbyter
cum t ua presbytcra, aut diaconus cum dutcunisna , aut sub diac onus cum subdiaconis •
sa.” etc.

(2) Socrates ; b. 1., c. 17.

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CONSECRATED VIRGINS AMONG THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 627

although Cardinal James de Vitriaco, writing about the year
1240, remarked : “ I have observed that many of these
women are very earnest in their struggle toward perfection ;
and probably they are acceptable to God precisely because
they have been in the fire, and nevertheless have not been
burnt ” (1).

(1) During tbe course of our disquisitions we have frequently had occasion to refer to
the mute but eloquent testimony of tbe Roman Catacombs in favor of many points of
Catholic dogma and discipline ; and here we would observe thatthe researches of the emi-
nent archaeologist, the late Commendatore De Rossi, show that the Catacombs are redolent
of testimony concerning the consecration of virgins among the primitive Christians. On
Feb. 14, 1900, the Roman archaeologists listened to a discourse in which the Rev. William
Campbell, formerly rector of the Scotch College in the Eternal City, recalled to miud many
of De Rossi’s observations on this subject. Shortly afterward tbe Baltimore Sun pub-
lished a synopsis of this lecture, and we submit to the reader a few of Its more salient
points. In the Catacomb of 8t. Priscilla, on the Salarian Way, a pictorial representation
in one of the oldest chambers shows the reception of the veil. There are three figures In
the group— a bishop, a deacon, and the maiden who is about to receive the veil. The
bishop, an aged man with a white beard, is seated on a chair or throne. With his right
band he points before him, probably to the figure at the other extremity of tbe picture,
which represents the Blessed Virgin, seated on a throne, bolding the Divine Infant in her
arms. Tbe action of tbe bishop has been interpreted as calling the attention of tbe virgin
about to be professed tod to receive the veil to tbe model she is to aim at imitating -the
Virgin Mother. The maiden stands at the side of the bishop, holding the veil with both
her hands. She is dressed in a long yellow tunic, with two red bands falling from the
shoulders to the feet. Behind her stands the deacon. In the centre of the picture there Is
a large figure of a virgin, with a veil and long dark red flowing gown or tunic. The veil,
which is white, hangs down on each side of her head, and near the ends it is crossed by
. bars of red color ; it terminates in a fringe. The figure is that known as an Orante , or
praying figure, and represents the virgin vowed to God, who was. In all probability, bur-
ied here and Is thus represented as having passed into the enjoyment of heavenly bliss.
The eyes are looking upward, and you may read tne desire of the artist to convey the Idea
that this Orante beholds the face of the Lord. This notion is strengthened by the doves
with olive branches and the peacocks— symbols of immortality— depicted In the curving
ceiling of the arcosollum, where these groups are painted. There are several other frescoes
in different catacombs in which virgins are represented, such as that in the catacomb of St.
Cynacus, where Christ is seen with five virgins on His right band, and five others on His
left. Those on His right hold up lighted torches, while thoseon His left bear extinguished'
torches. The picture Is easilv read as a symbolical representation of the five wise and the
five foolish virgins— tbe former with their lamps trimmed and burning, the latter with their
lamps extinguished for want of oil. That it has a special reference to this place, the cata-
comb of St. Cyrlacus. is evident from the fact that here in the vicinity of the Church of St.
Lawrence, which stands close to the catacomb, was in early centuries a convent for nuns.
When this church was restored and uewly adorned by Pope Pius IX. In 1862. mauy inscrip-
tions to the memory of virgins were found. The fresco in tbe catacomb of 8t. Priscilla,
representing the investiture of a virgin with the veil, belongs undoubtedly to the second
century, but the Interpretation of the subject of this fresco has been questioned, though
the burden of evidence favors the original Interpretation. In the latter half of the fourth
century, that the life of the cloister was established and recognized is evident from the
writings of Sr. Jerome, especially from the letters he wrote to those who led such lives, on
the duties and observances of their state. It has been supposed that Marcella, a noble
widow of Rome, was tbe first who gave the example of such a mode of life In the metrop-
olis of the Roman world. She studied the discinline which the widows nnd virgins placed
under tbe direction of Pachomius practiced in the monasteries of the Thehald : and she

did not blush,” says St. Jerome, “ to adopt a rule of life which she recognized as pleasing to
Ohr'st.” The interpretation, says De Rossi, which would represent St. Jerome ns hnvlng
said that Marcella was the first among noble Roman ladies to give the example of living

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

as virgins or as chaste widows. Is a wrong interpretation. Well, indeed, are tbe names of
. illustrious virgins and widows dedicated to God known and celebrated who flourished in
Rome in tbe very ages of tbe persecutions. Wbat St. Jerome says is only that Marcella
.first among Roman matrons undertook tbe monastic life in Rome, proposition numacho-
rum; that Is, that mode of solitary and severe living together with other companions of tbe
same intention. On the slabs found at St. Lawrence’s church, the epitaphs bear dates of
the years 434, 464, and 486. These are much later than the dates of other sacred virgins
mentioned in the writings of the Fathers, and very much later than the picture in the
catacomb of St. Priscilla. In fact, more than a century before the last of these dates, the
Latin poet of Christian Rome. Prudentlus, mentions the conventual bouse of St. Lawrence.
He mentions in a special manner a Vestal virgin uamed Claudia who, having left the wor-
ship of Vesta and embraced the Christian life, went to St. Lawrence’s— in every proba-
bility a convent of nuns in the vicinity of this church, tbe epitaphs of some of whom
were brought to light in 1862. It is in the proxiuiate catacomb— that of 8t. Cyriacus— that
the fresco representing the wise aud tbe foolish virgins was painted, and according to the
general opinion, over tbe tomb of one of these nuns. Other Incidents depicted here seem
to point to the fact that tbe tomb was that of a person converted to tbe faith. Tbe ques-
tion has been asked, could it have been the tomb of the Vestal Claudia who, as Prudentius
tells, became a Christian nun ? In the Atrium of Vesta— the courtyard of that pagan
cloister— there stands a pedestal bearing a most laudltory inscription to a high priestess of
Vesta, to whom a statue was erected on this pedestal by tbe college of the high priests,
under the vice-presidency of Macrinius Sossinus, as a testimony to her chastity and to her
profound knowledge in religious matters. The name of this highly lauded lady has been
carefully erased from the pedestal, no other erasure but the name having been made. On
the discovery of this pedestal in 1883, the minds of scholars and students went at once back
to tbe events of the time — for the pedestal is dated A. D. 364— and considered what was
likely to have happened in Rome at that date. It is contemporary, or almost so, witli the
words of Prudentlus in his hymn to 8t. Laurence—” Claudia the Vestal virgin enters
thy shrine.” It is not improbable that the virgin* buried at 8t. Lawrence’s, over whose
grave the fresco of the wise and foolish vlrgtns was painted, was Indeed that Claudia who
had forsaken the cloister of Vesta. It Is not Improbable that It was the name of Claudia
that was erased from the laudatory inscription In the Atrium of Vesta. However strange
these conjectures may seem at first sight, there is probability in them ; and thus tf they be
true, one of the noblest of the women of pagan Rome, for such were the Vestals, became
one of the noblest of the Christians, living out her pure and holy life at the shrine of the
martyr Lawrence, while the priests of paganism decreed that her memory should be con-
demned to obltvion and her name erased from their records of honor. It would again be
one of tbe Ironies of history to find that the name of the Vestal condemned to forgetful-
ness should under newer and better auspices be recorded in the writings of tbe great
Christian poet and held in bigb honor for centuries as that of Claudia, the converted Ves-
tal Virgin.

Gregorovlus. the most pretenttous and one of the most deliberately mendacious amonj?
the exponents of so-called ” German science ” in historical matters, audaciously asserts
that before the fourth century Rome kuew little or nothing concerning any special vener-
ation of the Blessed Virgin : that said devotion began only tn 432, when Sixtus III. restored
the Liberian Basilica, dedicating it to the Virgo Deipara. Thus tbe German ” historian ”
In bis History of the City of Rome in the Middle Aye, Vol. 1., p. 121. In an apposite
monograph entitled Historical Notes Concerning the Antiquity of the Veneration of
the Virgin Maru (Rome, 1887). the learned Jesuit, Mariano Armelllnl, demonstrates the
absurdity of tbe anttpathy ever displayed toward an even ordinary respect for the Most
Blessed among Women, on the part of the heterodox North— that North “which once gave
to the Latin races a lesson in regard to respect for women ” ; and he shows how Gregoro-
vius, problematically well equipped for a study of tbe Rome of tbe Ctesars, was absolutely
Ignorant of all that concerns Subterranean Rome, the Rome of the Martyrs. The monu-
ments of tbe Catacombs demonstrate that long before Pope Liberlus erected St. Mary
Major’s on the Ksquilltie, the disciples of the Apostles, children of those who had known
and conversed with Our Lady, ” had depicted her dear features on the sepulchres of their
dead, thus proving that the devotion of the nineteentb century for Mary is tbe same as that
of the primitive Church.”

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CHAPTER V.

SOME SALIENT FEATURES OF THE MIDDLE AGE.*
(Complement of Chap. 1 ., Vol. II.)

I. Astrology, Alchemy, and Sorcery.

Desire Nisard, the late venerable Dean of the French
Academy, once rebuked, a presumptuous, self-acclaimed wise
man with these words : “ It is not your knowledge, sir, but

your ignorance that we fear.” The Catholic apologist for
the Ages of Faith indulges in the same reflection whenever
he is obliged to note the arrogant ignorance of some decrier
of a period which the poor man has not studied. We have
no desire to ignore any of the salient features of the Middle
Age ; although we are ready to admit that Christendom was
then as now composed of human beings, and that then as
well as now individual men and general society suffered from
many failings. Among these failings — or, as the worshippers
of everything modem would term them, the crying evils — of
the most misunderstood of periods, we are sometimes asked
to note the existence of a blind faith in astrology, alchemy,
and sorcery. But was such a belief a creation of the Middle
Age ? He must be indeed a tyro in historical study who does
not know that astrology was a legacy from paganism ; that it
originated among the ancient Chaldeans ; that from Chaldea
it passed into Egypt, thence into Greece ; and that from the
decadent Lower Empire the Arabs transplanted it into
Spain, whence it was diffused throughout Europe. Very
little patience in investigation is required in order that one
may learn that all that was magical in astrology — that is, the
so-called judiciary astrology — was always condemned by the
Church. Even a casual student of the Middle Age knows
that natural astrology was only what we now term astronomv,
and that this science was always cultivated pre-eminently by
the mediaeval ecclesiastics. Judiciary astrology, which Kep-

* Most of the contents of this dissertation appeared in The Ave Maria, 1893 *99,
passim.

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ler rightly styled a “ crazy daughter of a sane mother,” pre-
tended to predict the future of men and states by means of
examination of the stars ; and we read that Charlemagne issued
many edicts against its practice, while many Pontiffs con-
demned it in apposite Bulls. And long after the Middle
Age had vanished, judiciary astrology continued to be in
vogue. To say nothing of the then still comparatively crude
English and Germans, the more enlightened Italians and
French were not guiltless in this matter, even iu the sixteenth
century. And even in our own day, astrology is practised
to a great extent among people who are far from mediaeval
in their tendencies ; and if it is not more in favor than it is,
especially among those who are outside of the Catholic
Church, the reason is to be found not in any superiority of
intellect, but in a spirit of materialism which prevents so
many non-Catholics from looking above the roofs of their
houses for an explanation of the things of earth.

The word “ alchemy ” — merely the Arab term for our
“ chemistry ” (al chtmia) — does not occur in any writings of
an earlier date than the ninth century ; but the science itself
is of ante-medneval origin. We know that the Greeks and
Arabs derived it from the Egyptians ; and that the latter,
with every appearance of reason, assigned its beginnings to
the early generations of humanity. As an illustration of the
antiquity of alchemical experiments and inventions, we may
adduce the fact that the art of enamelling, rediscovered by
the Frenchman, Bernard Palissy, in the sixteenth century,
was known not only by the ancient Etruscans wThose pottery
we so admire, but also by the Egyptians of thirty centuries
ago. Iu the Khedival Museum of the Boulak, in Cairo,
there are specimens of oua-chaptisy in a state of perfect
preservation, taken from the Pharaonic tombs, and evidently
at least three thousand years old. However, it is not this
legitimate alchemy or chemistry that the contemners of the
Middle Age indicate, when they ridicule that period as
addicted to charlatanry. They point to exceptional abuse ,
or rather travesties, of the science ; and they never use the
term “ alchemy ” in other than contemptuous fashion, reserv-
ing the synonym “ chemistry ” for the nobler operations and

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investigations of the same science. But is it true that
alchemy, understood in the ignoble sense of the term, flour-
ished peculiarly in the Middle Age ? Is it not rather an
indisputable fact that every age has furnished its charlatans
and innumerable victims, of whom it could always be said :
“ What fools these mortals be ” ? Long after the Middle Age
had disappeared, even in that Golden Age of the semi-pagan
and semi-Christian Renaissance, if we take a peep at Sedan, we
shall see Henry L de Bouillon negotiating with an itinerant
alchemist who has promised to communicate to the needy
prince the “great secret” of the method of manufacturing
gold. And the man of the world, the circumspect politician,
having witnessed “ with his own eyes,” as he afterward
assured his friends, the fact of the transmutation of metals,
gave to his deceiver what would be a quarter of a million of
our money, that he might advance the cause of science in
the imminent Congress of the adepts at Venice. During
this same illuminated period of the Renaissance, Charles IX.
of France, intent on the same method of acquiring wealth,
was swindled by Jacob Gautier to the amount of twenty
thousand louis d’or. We may note, however, that Pope Leo
X. was more prudent than either Bouillon or Charles IX.
When Giovanni Augurello read to His Holiness his poem,
Chrysopea , or “ The Art of Making Gold,” the greedy
promoter received from the grand Mreceuas in tiara, not a
plethoric purse, but an empty one, which, observed Leo,
would serve to hold the fortune which would soon be
manufactured. If we approach nearer to our own days, we
behold the entire school of Voltaire, to a man, dupes of
charlatans like Cagliostro, the Count de Saint-Germain, and
J. J. Casanova (1). Again, we must not forget that the
chemical, or alchemical (if we must use the term), investiga-
tions of the Middle Age were the immediate causes of all the
advances made by modern chemistry. In fact, the study of
the occult, the prostitution of science in the interest of
knavery, occupied much less of the attention of our mediaeval
ancestors than is commonly supposed. Speaking of the
aberrations of certain mediaeval alchemists, Cantu says :

(1) See our remurks on Cagliostro in Vol. iv., p. 420.

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“Those vagaries of human reason were an inheritance c*
untiquity, and they ceased during the most glorious centuries of
Christianity ” (the early Middle Age). Undoubtedly, it is to
be regretted that human intelligence ever abandoned itself
to such a delirium ; but the occult sciences were to have their
moment of reign in the age of imagination, and to impel, by
means of the imagination, the minds of men to an activity of
which reason alone was not capable. How many vigils were
consecrated to study by those men who thought that thereby
they would surely discover the universal remedy and the
philosopher’s stone ! It was out of their labors that chem-
istry was born.” It was only after the time of Raimondo
Lullo that rascals turned alchemy into an instrument for
swindling, and that it was abandoned by men of merit
From the time of Lullo to that of Palissy it made no prog-
ress. While engaged in alchemy, Arnaldo di Yillanova
(b. 1238), the preceptor of Lullo, discovered the sulphuric,
muriatic, and nitric acids. He it was who made the first
attempts at the distillation which afterward produced alcohol.
Paracelsus introduced antimonial, saline, and ferruginous
preparations. Glauber discovered the sulphate of soda.
Basil Valentino (or whatever Benedictine monk wrote under
that name in the fifteenth century) gave to us vitriolized tartar.

Judiciary astrology and the abuses of alchemy certainly
produced many baneful effects during the Middle Age ; but
fchey were harmless when compared with the evils which
attended the practice of sorcery — that lengthy hallucination,
says Littre, “ which afflicted humanity during many long
centuries. The prodigious multitude of sorcerers who were
victims of a senseless justice, show how persistently and
effectively intellectual maladies are communicated. The
executioner did not deter the sorcerers ; and they all died,
avowing their relations with the demon.” But, like the cor-
ruptions of astrology and alchemy, sorcery was not peculiar
to the Middle Age. It existed among the aucient Egyptians,
and even among the Jews long before the time of Moses, as
we learn from Deuteronomy ; and in Kings we read how the
Pvthoness of Eudor caused the ghost of Samuel to appear to
Saul. The works of ancient Greece are more redolent of the

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paraphernalia of sorcery than of the glories of Hellas ; you
can open scarcely one of the Greek narratives, plays, poems*
or philosophical treatises, without meeting divinations,
philtres, charms, invocations of the dead, metamorphoses of
men into animals, etc. Every student remembers the scene
described by Homer, where Tiresias prepares the ditch filled
with blood for a summoning of the shades ; and that scene
where Circe changes the companions of Ulysses into pigs.
We know that in pagan Rome sorcery was an acknowledged
profession ; and in the time of Tacitus its adepts, under the
name of “ mathematicians,” were addicted to abominations
which caused the great historian to number them among the
worst scourges of the empire. These were the “ mathema-
ticians ” against whom Pope St. Gregory the Great so forcibly
inveighed, with the result that many Protestant writers
exhibit him as An illustration of papal hostility to learning (1).
From Roman paganism, by means of Neo-Platonism (a phil-
osopliico-poetical mixture of Indian, Egyptian, and Greek
doctrines, which the School of Alexandria tried to substitute
for pure Christianity) sorcery and other theosophistic inven-
tions found their way into early mediaeval society ; but dur-
ing the halcyon days of this Age of Faith — that is, from the
eighth to the fourteenth century — the number of adepts of
occultism was always incomparably less than that which
flourished during the Renaissance. Nor could it have hap-
pened otherwise. In pagan times, when, to use the words of
Bossuet, “everything was God excepting God Himself,”
association with demons, either real or imaginary, was not
repugnant to the tastes of men, especially since it was.
endowed with the charms of terror. But the worship of de-
mons could not subsist in hearts which were occupied by faith
in the one, all-powerful, and loving God. In vain did the
powers of darkness join the remnants of the Latin with the
Germanic superstitions in order to oppose a last resistance
to the conquests of the God-Man : the mind of the Church,
like that of her grandest poet, Dante, assigned to the sorcerer
the lowest place in hell. But when the Renaissance tried
to effect an alliance between the ideas of paganism and those

(1) See our Vol. i., p. 389.

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of Christianity, there was a great revival of the ancient ten-
dency to superstition ; and then arrived the Golden Age of
sorcery, — a fact which seems not to be recognized by the
admirers of the Renaissance and the decriers of the Middle
Age. And this Golden Age of sorcery reached its culmina-
tion in the sixteenth century, the period of Protestantism
and of scepticism, when the characteristics of the Middle
Age had become mere traditions. When writers on sorcery
adduce instances of capital punishment for this crime, they
seldom go further back than the sixteenth century. They
do, indeed, point to the signal case of Joan of Arc in the
fifteenth century ; but what modern historian, possessed of
•critical acumen, and not enrolled in the service of the father
of lies, ventures to assert that the English murderers of the
sweet Maid of Orleans really believed that she was a
sorceress ?

The many treatises encouraging sorcery and demonology
which were published and scattered broadcast throughout
Europe, especially in Germany and England, at the time
when the so-called Reformers were claiming that human
reason had broken its fetters, were the cause of a spread of
superstition such as the Middle Age never knew. Martin
Luther and his companion preachers contributed their share
in furthering the contagion. If we except Luther himself,
Melanchthon, and a few others of the first innovators, who
had been trained by that Church whose seamless garment
they were rending, the early preachers of Lutheranism were
men of no education ; and naturally, instead of combating
the belief and practice of sorcery, they helped to propagate
the evils. Luther himself said that he held theological con-
ferences with the devil (1), and that he often saw the
Killkropft — a child born of Satanic parents— sitting among
his own offspring ; and for many years after the heresiarch’s
death, credulous visitors to his room in Wartburg were
shown the inkspot on the wall which recalled his interview
with the prince of darkness. M. Alfred Rambaud — a dis-
ci) Works of Luther , Vol. ill. — Claude’s Defense of the Reformation , pt. 2. -Nicole’s
Legitimate Prejudices , cb. 2.— Basn&ge’s History of the Reformed Churches , Vol. ilU
oh. 5.— Bayle’s Dictionary , Art. Luther .

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tinguislied professor of the French Institute of our day, and
of course a freethinker, — is astonished when he reflects on
the fact that, in so many places in the days of the Refor-
mation, superstition should have taken the place of religion :
“ It is very strange, and very humiliating for human reason,
that when the Middle Age had vanished ; when Charron and
Montaigne had just written those books so impregnated with
the spirit of scepticism ; precisely then, in the full light of
the sixteenth century, persecutions of sorcerers entered on
their most violent phase ” (1). One of the most sincere writers
on sorcery, albeit probably the most tiresome and pedantic,
was the royal head of the English Church Establishment, that
“ wisest fool in Europe,” as Sully termed him, James L “ It
is not a century,” writes Voltaire, “ since King James him-
self, that great enemy of the Roman communion and of the
Pope, caused his Demonology to be printed. Master James,
as Henry IV. styled him, admitted the fact of enchantments,
etc. ; he granted the power of the devil, and that of the Pope,
who, according to him, has the power of expelling Satan
from the bodies of the possessed, just as all priests have it.
And even we — we unfortunate Frenchmen, who think to-day
that we have re-acquired a little common sense, — even we
were then immersed in — oh, what a sewer of stupid barbarism
it was ! At that time there was not one parliament, not one
tribunal, which was not engaged in trying sorcerers.”

Yes, M. Arouet, it was a shame for France that her
parliaments and other courts of judicature, like the tribunals
in Protestant lands, and notably like the disciples of Cotton
Mather in the English colonies of America, were so foolishly
cruel toward men and women who may have been guilty of
devil-worshiping, but who may have been the victims of
hallucination, and may have been more innocent than their
judges. But, Sage of Ferney, you who were so sympathetic
toward the real or alleged sorcerers and witches who cursed
the Pope, at the very time when you wrote of Pombal’s
burning oFthe Jesuits at Lisbon (2) that “it is a good

(1) History of Civilization , Vol. 1., p. 511. Paris, 1885.

(2) It bad been rumored In France that Pombal bad sent twenty Jesuits to tbe stake ;
and it was of this reported hecatomb to Freemasonry and Protestantism that Voltaire said

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8TUDIE8 IN CHURCH HISTORY.

beginning,” could not have been ignorant of the fact that
those cruelties would not have been possible in the early
Middle Age, when the merciful spirit of the ChuTch per-
meated the civil jurisprudence. You must have known that
at least in that France which you so persistently besmirched,
the jurisprudence which you rightly decry was a revival of
the old Jus Penale Roman um, which had been replaced by
the Canon Law of the Church until Philip the Fair broke
with all the traditions of the Middle Age, and put secular
tribunals in the place of the “ Courts of Christianity ” which
had never prescribed the pain of death for sorcery.

Witchcraft (that form of sorcery which is the most familiar
to the American student of history), was a legacy of paganism,
and was scarcely known until toward the close of the Middle
Age, when the hitherto all-pervading spirit of the Church
was beginning to lose its hold on European institutions.
The student of the classics will remember Lamia, beloved by
Jupiter, and the victim of Juno's jealousy ; the murderess of
children and the foe of imminent motherhood (1). From
this idea of Lamia the pagan Romans drew that of beautiful
but lubricious women whom the gods had transformed into
witches— striges, — and who sucked the blood of infants, or
weakened them by feeding them from their own breasts.
Garlic was supposed to be a remedy for these enchant-
ments (2). Lucian and Apeleius give .many notions concern-
ing the witches of Thessaly, and their powers of transfor-
mation. The Jewish Talmud , that strange mixture of tra-
ditional ancient wisdom and puerile errors, speaks of a
certain Lilith, who may have been a version of the pagan
Lamia. This Lilith, says the Talmud , was the first wife of
Adam, a mother of demons, and most baneful to the newly-
born children of men ; and in order to obviate all danger to
the infant, it was deemed necessary to place in the room of

It would do for a beginning. We can Imagine the chagrin of the Sage when he learned
that only one Jesuit had been burnt— Father Malagrlda. (See our Vol. lv., p. 452.)

(1) “ Neu pramw Lamice vivum pucrum extrahat alw” ^Horace, In “vlrs Poetical
340.)

(2) “ Prceterea si forte premit strix atra putllas,

Virosa immulQens exert.is uhera labrix.

Alia itrcecepit Tilint sententia vccti.”

— Serenus Samonicus, ch. 60.

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the mother a triangle bearing the names of God, Eve, and
Adam, together with the warning, “ Away, O Lilith ! ”
Another instance of the belief in witchcraft in the early days
of Christianity is furnished by the legend that when
Herodias received the head of the Baptist, she attempted to
kiss it ; and that the mouth of the victim opened, emitting a
breath which sent the murderess floating in the air, where
she is still seen in the quiet of night, waiting for opportunity
to injure Christians.

However, during the greater part of the Middle Age there
was but little belief in witchcraft. Friar Bernard Rategno,
a most zealous Inquisitor of the sixteenth century, whose
Guide for Inquisitors is praised by that light of the Holy
Office, FranciB Pegna, says that there were no witches in
Christendom “before the time when the Decree of Graticm
was compiled ” — that is, about the year 1151 ; and he adds
that “the Siriginrum sect a first appeared only about a
hundred and fifty years ago, as is evident from the archives
of the Inquisition” (1). We are justified, therefore, in
believing that it was only after the crime of Anagni had
entailed the vital end of the Middle Age, that witchcraft and
its attendant horrors became a scourge to humanity.

II. — Trades-Unions.

Among the many proofs that the lot of the mediaeval
workingman was superior to that of his modern brother,
not the least convincing is found in those trades-unions of
the Middle Age, which formed an essential constituent of
not only the social organism, but also of the political life of
that too frequently misunderstood period. A trade-union an
institution of the Middle Age ? Is it possible that in that
“ dark period ” there existed associations for the protection
of the laborer? Such is the fact, surprising though it may
be to those who have been led to think that all the social
good in the world is a thing of yesterday. In the Histoi'y
of the Hermit Ampelius (2), which dates from the fifth

(1) Guide far the Inquisitors Into Heretical Perverseness, in Which They May
Find All That They Need to Know for the Exercise of Their Office ; by Friar
Bernard of Como, Friar- Preacher and Illustrious Inquisitor. Milan, J506.

(2) In the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine.

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scentury, we read of the “ consuls ” or presidents of the lock-
smiths. In many of the Chronicles of the Carlovingian
period we find mention of the corporation of the goldsmiths.
We discover that the bakers had formed an -association even
in the time of King Dagobert ; for an ordinance of that
monarch, dated in 630, speaks of them in their collective
capacity. Several of the Capitulars of Charlemagne pre-
scribed the number of journeymen whom the bakers’
association may receive, to the end that the trade may not
be overcrowded. In the days of this first Holy Homan
Emperor there were in Lombardy many collegia of artisans,
probably relics of the ancient pagan Roman associations,
or rather imitations of those bodies, transformed and sancti-
fied by the Church. In many of the Annals of Ravenna, we
perceive that about the year 943 there was in that gem of
the Adriatic a collegium of fishermen ; the same annals, at
the year 953, make mention of a corporation of traders ; and
in 1001 they introduce us to a president of the batchers.
In 1061 King Philip I., of France, grants privileges to the
“ masters ” of the tallow-chandlers. The records of the
reign of Louis VII., at the year 1162, allude to time-honored
customs of the butchers’ union. In 1182 Philip Augustus
confirmed the statutes of the butchers, as well as those of the
furriers and the drapers (1). It is true that in Germany,
during the early Middle Age, artisans were generally mere
serfs ; but in the twelfth century even there the laborers had
formed their einnungen, or unions, although the princes
placed every obstacle in the way of these associations, and
the emperors (notably Frederick II.) decreed their abolition.
In France, on the contrary, just as in Italy and in Spain,
there was never any antagonism between the trades-unions
and the monarch ; and from the time of St. Louis IX. to
the Revolution, royal confirmations of the privileges of these
.associations were multiplied. In 1261 St. Louis appointed
Etienne Boileau, a wealthy bourgeois , to the provostship of
Paris, charging him with the task of collating in form all
the customs and usages of each trade-union ; for as yet those

(1) Cushms and Usage s of the Middle Age , and at the Time of the Renaissance ; by
Paul Lacroix (Bibliophile Jacob*. Vol. 1., p. 801, 6th edit. Party, 1878.

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♦customs, etc., had been merely traditional. Boileau conferred
with the “ masters ” of all the associations, and the result
•of his labor. was the Livre des Metiers , or “ Book of the
Trades,” which Depping edited in 1837 ; and which, as the
editor observed, “ has the advantage of being, in great part
the unaffected work of the unions themselves, and not a
series of regulations established and formulated by municipal
or judicial authority.” This work of Boileau contains the
statutes of a hundred different organizations of artisans ; but
during the reigns of the Yalois and that of Henry IV. the
number of trades-unions in France was increased to an im-
measurable extent, there having been, in the time of the first
Bourbon monarch, one thousand five hundred and fifty-one
in Paris alone. The fourteenth century was the golden age
for all the trades-unions in Europe. At that time they
paraded their own armorial insignia in every religious or
other public solemnity. They enjoyed the right of discuss-
ing their own general interests and of modifying their
statutes. In order to unite its members more closely, each
trade inhabited a special quarter of a city, and preferably
one street, as is shown to-day by the names of innumerable
streets in every European city of any antiquity

The trades-unions of the early Middle Age exercised a
civil and, to some extent, a criminal jurisdiction over their
respective members ; but since they constantly tended to
extend the limits of this jurisdiction, the municipalities and
sovereigns finally restricted it to a simple affair of police, to
be exercised only in matters concerning the business of the
unions. The relations of a union with its members were
held by means of officers, who were variously styled as
kings, masters, deans, wardens, or syndics. These officers
decided all disputes between employers and employees ;
Rnd at any moment a shop or factory was liable to be
entered by one of these representatives of the sovereign
-corporation, in order to discover whether any infraction of
the rules was being committed. These syndics, etc., were
generally elected by the members of the unions ; in some
♦cases they were appointed by the king himself or the feudal
lord It is by no means a rarity for the reader to discover

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in mediaeval annals instance^ of women filling these positions.-
An eminent publicist of our day has well said that the cor-
porations (so were termed these unions) formed the beloved
country of the laborer, the artisan, the mechanic, and the
artist of the Middle Age (1) ; and it is certain that in those
days, far from hating the middle class, the workingman-
could afford to regard the bourgeois as his equal, since no
member of the bourgeoisie occupied so eminent a position
socially, or exercised so much civil authority, as did the syn-
dic of a corporation ; and every workingman knew that the
syndicship was the reward of probity and of skill in his
trade (2).

The corporation of the Middle Age (let not the word
alarm the reader who may be suspicious of modern cor-
porations) was a “moral personality,” which guaranteed to
the workingman many social, material, and moral advan-
tages which are unknown to the modern laborer, whether,
as is the rule in most countries, he be in that state of isola-
tion to which the individualizing tendencies of the day
condemn him, or whether he belong to that unsatisfactory
substitute for the corporation of the Ages of Faith, the
modern trade-union. In the Middle Age the workingman
“ was a body in the state ; now he is merely an individual ” (3).
The medieval corporation protected each one of its members ;
the modern omnipotent state confronts individuals who are
powerless in their vaunted independence. In the mediaeval
corporation the laborer, artisan, or artist found the means
to satisfy his most ordinary and pressing needs — primary
and industrial instruction for his children, his own support
when sick or incapacitated by age, and even dowries for his
marriageable daughters. The mediaeval guild (another
name for this admirable institution) was surrounded by an
atmosphere of religion the most life-giving, as it is the most
encouraging atmosphere which the workingman can breathe.
Each guild was placed under the patronage of some special

(1) Levassecr ; History of the Working Classes in France. Paris. 1859.

(2) Focqce ; Historical Researches Concerning the Communal Revolution in the
Middle Age. Paris, 1840.

(3) Romain ; Was the Middle Age a Period of Darkness and of Servitude f Paris.
1895.

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fsaint ; the feast of the patron was the great holiday of each
member and of his family ; the saint's portrait was the
prominent feature of the guild’s banner ; in the church
dedicated to the saint (or in the absence of such, before his
image) the apprentice assumed the obligations of his “ master-
ship ” ; in fine, in every action of the corporation, as such,
every member was made to feel that the end of labor should
not be the mere accumulation of money, but rather the
sanctification of one’s soul.

In nearly all the pictures and medals of the thirteenth
and fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, illustrating the
careers of the mediaeval guilds, which may be seen to-day in
the Vatican Museum, the religious spirit of these associa-
tions is attested as having been of their very essence (1).
Here we see the workingmen marching in solemn religious
procession, surrounded by the emblems of their corporation,
bearing lighted candles and revealing an expression of de-
votion which real acolytes do not always present. There
we see a guild kneeling in prayer, probably in its own
special church ; and the artist has endowed the figures of
the suppliauts with a spirit which leads us to believe that
those laborers, mechanics, or artists did conscientious worjs.
Conscientious ? Certainly ; for when the apprentice was
received as journeyman, one of the solemn promises which
he made to God and to his corporation was to the effect that
he would do “ loyal ” (that is, sound and honest) work. It
was the duty of the syndic to see that this promise was kept,
and to destroy or undo every piece of work which would
bring discredit on the association. The instinctive and dis-
ciplinary “ loyalty ” of these mediaeval workmen is evidenced
in every production of their hands which has come down to
us. Every mediaeval corporation consisted of apprentices
(for one, two, or three years, according to the nature of the
labor or art), of journeymen, of aspirants to a mastership, and
of wardens. The modern trade-union is an association of em-
ployees, the employer having no other connection with the
organization than that which is entailed by his nearly con-
stant antagonism to its measures, — an antagonism which is

<!> Many of these representations are reproduced in the monumental work of Lacroix.

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sometimes justifiable, frequently inexcusable, alid always
lamentable. In the mediaeval guild the employer was a mem-
ber, and he was as subject to its laws as was the humblest
apprentice. The mediaeval employer, just like the newest
apprentice in the guild, regarded as the aegis of his happi-
ness, as the symbol of his real glory, that silken banner on
which was admired, in gold or in silver, the saw of the
carpenter, or the knife of the shoemaker, or the scissors of
the tailor, or the crown and golden cross of the goldsmith ;
and like the apprentice, the employer was ever guided by
the motto of his corporation, which could never lead him
astray, since the device of every guild was assigned by the
spirit of Christ (1). In order to become a member of a
corporation, a person was obliged to prove that he was of
good reputation, and it was necessary that the commune or
municipality should certify his moral character. The candi-
date was also obliged to show that he was capable of
performing, or of learning how to perform, the labors of his
chosen craft ; and when he had passed the examination, he
was presented to the mayor of the municipality, and then
led to a banquet of initiation, accompanied by two “ god-
fathers.” When the apprentice had become a journeyman,
his great ambition was the mastership in his trade or art,
and that grade could not be attained until he had produced
a “ masterpiece ” which won the approval of the best judges
in the corporation. Once a master in his trade, the work-
man of the Middle Age could travel in any country of
Europe, and he would always be sure to receive assistance
from his brethren of the same trade. In those days, says
Levasseur, the corporation was the safeguard and the teacher
of industry. “ It taught the people how to govern them-
selves. It did more : it gave to the artisan dignity, a taste
for his business, pecuniary aid, the joys of fraternity in
the most extensive sense of the word. It was the great
affair of the working classes — the source of their pleasures,
and the interest of their entire life.” As George Sand
expressed the idea, the corporation “ conferred on the

(1) The corporations of Paris all had for device: Vincit Concordia Fratrum—" The
concord of brothers conquers.”

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543

initiated a patent of nobility, of which he was proud and
zealous even unto excess.”

A very productive source of revenue, for both the corpor-
ation and the municipality, was formed by the system of
fines for every delinquency on the part of a member. But
gross offences against the reputation of the association in
matter of “ loyalty ” were not condoned by a merely pecuniary
sacrifice. At as late a date as the fifteenth century, we find
that adulteration of material , and cidpable deficiency of care
■in building , were punished by death , just as other kinds of
robbery were then punished. The good traditions of each
trade or profession, as well as the public interest, were
guaranteed by the care which was taken for the morals of all
the members. If any of them associated with, labored with,
or took food with an excommunicated person, a reprimand
ensued ; a repetition of the offence entailed more severe
punishment, perhaps expulsion from the guild. Immorality,
in the case of a master, meant the loss of his mastership ; in
the case of an apprentice, it prevented his entrance on the ex-
amination for advancement. In many corporations the most
trivial indecent expression was followed by a fine. Injudi-
cious rivalry was obviated by prohibiting a new master from
opening an establishment within a certain distance from the
quarters of liis old superior. Among the merchants and
traders there was no “ pulling in ” in those days ; the street
was as free to the wayfarer as the castle to the baron.

That in time abuses arose in the mediaeval corporations
cannot be denied ; but most of those abuses originated at
the decline of the Middle Age, not in its prime. And even
though those abuses —natural concomitants of everything
human — had been tenfold more numerous and more con-
demnable than they were, they were more than neutralized
by the eloquent fact that the laborer and artisan were then
free men, and that their liberty was defended by municipal
institutions and by the confraternities to which these work-
ingmen belonged. It cannot be denied that the modern
workingman is sometimes reasonably proud of his individual
liberty ; but it may be questioned whether his condition bo
not rather one of individual abandonment , in the face of that

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capital which has become, to a very great extent, his antag-
onist,— that capital which in the Middle Age was his partner
in the strict sense of the term. Indeed, absolute social
equality is purely utopian; but its semi-insane advocates
ought to acclaim the corporations of the Middle Age as having
done more than any modern institution has effected in the way
of harmonizing the social classes. It is of the essence of fal-
len human nature to be subject to the attacks of the passion
of envy ; therefore there was, in the Middle Age, a certain
amount of ill-feeling for the rich and the lords of feudality,
on the part of those whose bread was gained by the sweat
of their brows. But how trivial was that envy if it be com-
pared with that hatred of “ the capitalist ” which is now but
too rampant in the breasts of very many workingmen !
Speaking of France, where the mediaeval corporations did not
disappear entirely until the Revolution of 1789, the very
unclerical Proudhon pronounces their abolition a “great
iniquity — “ It was the new system of law, inaugurated in
1789, which created the entirely new distinction between the
middle class [la bourgeoisie] and that of the working people
[les protitaires], — a distinction which was unknown in feudal
times. Before ’89 the workingman lived in the corporation
and in the mastership, just as a wife, a child, or a servant
lives in the family. Then it would have been simply absurd
to recognize one class of employers and another of employees ;
for then the employers included the employed. But since
’89 — the tie of the corporations having been severed without
any equalization of wealth and condition between masters
and workingmen, without any provision for a repartition of
capital, and for a new organization of labor and of the rights
of laborers, — a distinction has arisen between the class of
capitalists and great proprietors who were the manipulators
of the instruments of labor, and the class of laborers who
were mere wage-earners. The deep-seated antagonism
between the two classes — a thing unknown in the Middle
Age — cannot be denied ; and that which caused it teas a great
iniquity .”

This judgment of the giant among the many pygmies of
modern Socialism should be well considered by all proletarian

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545

sympathizers. Class hatred is styled by M. Levasnier, the
editor of the Parisian journal La Corporation, “ the barbar-
ism of the civilized world, the dynamite of progress which
threatens to destroy the edifice of society.” When the
Revolution of 1789 abolished the corporations in France, the
government realized that the workingmen would suffer,
and it promised to frame “a law on associations which
would restore to the laborer the guarantees which had
disappeared with his corporative organization.” But unto
this day that law has not been passed ; and there is too
much truth in the words of the extremely radical journal,
the Cri du Peuple , when, after declaring that in the Middle
Age the laborer was a free man, it complains that in our day
“ the condition of the workingman is very similar to that of
a serf who enjoys a relative liberty, while because of that
liberty his master has no duties in his regard.” The trade-
union of the Middle Age was certainly a close corporation,
and probably its consequent condition of a privileged
monopoly was its chief defect. M. Levasseur contends that
this monopoly was justifiable at a time when “ labor was
extremely conscientious,” the market very difficult, and
local life very limited. Be this as it may, the monopolistic
feature, the closeness of the corporation, might have been
abolished without a destruction of the union itself ; and
there is no reason why our day should not see a revival of
the mediaeval institution, divested of its spirit of exclusiveism,
but being, as of yore, a veritable representative of the inter-
ests of the workingmen. In France the enterprises of the
noble Count Albert de Mun bid fair to bring about some
such consummation.

III. — Business Features.

Should some enterprising archaeologist of the twenty-fifth
century undertake to investigate the social life of the nine-
teenth, would he derive any information from a perusal of
one of the ledgers of any of the monstrous “ department-
stores ” now so common in both Europe and America ?
Some of the account-books of these establishments may
possibly survive the vicissitudes of the next five or six

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centuries ; and possibly, though very improbably, the ink of
the nineteenth century may prove to have been, in some
rare instances, nearly as durable as that of the Middle Age.
But a twenty-fifth century investigator will scarcely find any
eloquence in the interminable columns of dry and heartless
figures which are now more distressingly monotonous to
many poor book-keepers than are, to any seamstress, the
stitches produced to the tune of the “Song of the Shirt.”
Will any idea be derived concerning the private lives of
those individuals whose shopping proclivities are now the
cause of the ledger’s existence ? The average merchant of
our day will tell you, of course, that his account-book must
necessarily deal with nothing but dollars and cents ; that in
his business minds and hearts have no place ; and that only
a madman would expect the records of his office to furnish
material for a treatise on social or religious economy. Very
different from this theory was that entertained by the
average business man in the Ages of Faith. Then hardness
of heart did not cause a mercantile register to present a
record merely of monetary transactions — of things which
are of no use to the philosophy of history. Of course in
mediaeval days, as in our own, the merchant noted accurately
each expenditure and each sale ; but then time was found,
or made, for such an explanation of each transaction as
renders it, when examined by the modern investigator, an
interesting and reliable source of history.

Under the auspices of the Historical Society of Gascony
there was published, in 1890, a ledger of a mercantile
establishment which flourished in the fourteenth century
at Montauban (1). The book had been unearthed in the
archives of Montauban by M. Edouard Forestie ; and when
read with the aid of the Introduction furnished by its dis-
coverer, it sheds much light upon the social and economic-
conditions of the Middle Age. We learn from this book
of accounts that the Bonis Brothers were general merchants
in Montauban. They were bankers, both of deposit and of
issue ; money-lenders ; collectors of taxes and of ecclesiasti-

(1) Ledgers of the Bonis Brothers , Merchants in Montauban in the Fourteenth
Century. Paris, 1890.

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80ME SALIENT FEATURES OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 647

cal revenues ; executors of wills ; dealers in all kinds of
dry-goods, made clothing, and shoes ; jewellers, armorers,
and mechanicians ; manufacturers and loaners of all things
requisite for baptisms, weddings, and funerals ; manufac-
turers of gunpowder and of all kinds of chemicals ; wholesale
and retail apothecaries, confectioners, etc. We are told
that the two members of the firm lived in apartments over
the immense halls in which the goods were retailed ; that
the younger brother, Gerard, was married, and had several
children, who were educated at home by a Master of Arts j
that during “ the year of mortality ” — that is, 1349, the year
of the Great Plague — two of these children died ; and that
in the following year, Pope Clement VI. having proclaimed
a Jubilee, the bereaved parent journeyed to the Eternal City,
that he might obtain, as the book-keeper piously notes, rest
for the departed and grace for himself. The clerk describes
carefully the itinerary of his master : “ He who wishes to

visit SS. Peter and Paul, St. John of the Lateran, and the
other saints in ancient Home, should proceed from here [Mon-
tauban] to Avignon. He will dine at Avignon. At night he
will sleep at Carpentras. On the next day he will dine at
Sault, and then he will sleep at Sederon. . . . On the twenty-
third day he will dine most joyously in ancient Rome. Dur-
ing this year 1350 our lord the Pope grants pardon from
guilt and punishment to all repentant persons who have con-
fessed their sins. This present Pope is a native of Avignon.”
Since the clerk informs us how’ careful M. Gerard Bonis,
was in complying with the conditions of the “ Pardon,” we
are not surprised on hearing that in the house of the great
merchants there was a resident chaplain, whose chief duty it
was to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the living and
dead of the house of Bonis.

One of the striking features of this mediaeval ledger is its
presentation of evidence that the Bonis Brothers never
charged interest to their debtors. It is undoubtedly true
that many merchants in the Middle Age were less disinter-
ested ; but a very small minority — and that minority com-
posed almost entirely of Jews — were guilty of what was
then regarded as a nefarious practice, since the ecclesiastical

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8TUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

canons of that period prohibited it. Another important
fact evinced by this boot is the not merely comfortable but
the luxurious conditions enjoyed by most of the customers of
the Bonis. The list of purchases shows that during the
fourteenth century not only were garments of very fine
texture worn by tlifc lower middle class of the French, but
that even the peasants were not unaffected by the tyranny of
fashion. Much of the time and energy of the Bonis was
consumed in the manufacture of medicines ; and the ledger
gives valuable information concerning the ingredients of
many of the popular nostrums of the day. We learn that
in the little city of Montauban — then of about ten thousand
souls — there were eighteen regular physicians ; in the Su-
burban parish of Montricoux the pastor was the acting
iEsculapius ; and in some places one individual was both
lawyer and physician. One of the curious items is a charge
for a quantity of powder for cannon — polveras per lo cano —
entered against the monastery of St.-Theodard (1).

Luxury at the table, if we are to credit the revelations of
the Bonis ledger, which speaks of sales of the finest condi-
ments and confections to families of the middle class, was
well known to the French of the fourteenth century, what-
ever may have been the gastronomic taste of the English
and Germans of that time. There is scarcely a spice or a
sweet known to us that is not charged to some bourgeois of
Montauban. As to the peasants, their condition, as evinced
by this quaint but reliable authority, is very different from
that described as theirs by most modern historians. We
find many of these presumed unfortunates stamping their
documents with their own seals — things which are generally
supposed to be prerogatives of aristocracy ; we learn that

(1) Commenting on this entry, M. Forests makes this Interesting remark : “ Hugues de
Cardaillac, lord of Bioule, nephew of the Bishop of Montauban, was one of the most
-valiant knights in the French army. Friend and combade of Gallois de la Beaume, grand-
master of the cross-bowmen, he had a brilliant share in the campaign of Gascony, under
the standard of Armagnac. We And him in 1339 making the cannons which are to defend
Cambrai against the English, and it is his squire who makes the powder. At Bioule we
see him with twenty-two hr ewh -loading cannons. It was he who furnished the artillery
to the walls of Montauban, Lauzerte, and Cahors ; and thus we And that there were sixty
cannons on the ramparts of four little towns of Quercy, Just at the time when Villani (and
after him many modern writers) states that at Crecy three little cannons demoralized the
French chivalry/’

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their garments were lined with fur, and that they lived in
brick houses rather than in the loathsome huts in which we
are accustomed to picture them. Every farm laborer had
his wages and other recompenses assured by written con-
tract. As a specimen of these contracts, we give the follow-
ing : “ He is to be in our service, with his own ox and one
belonging to us, from January until the Fe$st of St. John
the Baptist (June 24), to act as ox-driver and general .farm-
servant ; and we are to give him a barrel of wheat, a barrel of
mixed grain, and two barrels of wine.” Many of the laborers
mentioned in this ledger had quite comfortable properties.
Thus the swineherd, Jean Chausse-Noire, owned a fine vine-
yard. Salona, an ox-driver for the Bonis, owned two houses-
in Montauban ; and his wealth must have been considerable,,
since the ledger notes that on the occasion of the baptism
of one of his children he bought two hundred and twenty
livres’ worth of wine for the feast. Another peasant, owner
of an extensive vineyard, must have dwelt in a fairly large
house ; for we read that he bought twenty thousand bricks
from the Bonis for the facing of its walls. One of the ser-
vants of Gerard Bonis was a rival of that steward whom
Chaucer represents as so thrifty that he could lend to his
master “ out of his owen gude ” ; for we find that this
domestic loaned three golden scudi to Gerard during his
Roman pilgrimage. Those who believe that the peasants
of the Middle Age were generally illiterate, should observe
that in the register of the Bonis many of the laborers signed
receipts with their names ; and the same, book tells us that
each village of the neighborhood had a school, in which the
parish priest was pedagogue. Commenting on the discovery
of M. Forestie, that sage and impartial critic, Lecoy de la
Marche, makes these reflections : “ The general prosperity
of which we have seen the proof, and which the people of
France owed to the wise and firm government of St. Louis,,
was soon to disappear amid the incalculable disasters of
the Hundred Years’ War ; and the second half of the four-
teenth century was not at all like the first. But the Hun-
dred Years’ War was the end of the Middle Age, the
tearing up of the pacific charter which united the nations

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and constituted Christian society. The Middle Age, prop-
erly so called, was a flourishing period for commerce and
agriculture, and for both public and private fortune. Let
it be loudly proclaimed that down to the end of that period —
down to the day when the peace of Jesus Christ ceased to
cover Europe like a protecting mantle — the world knew
much more of happiness than it has known since, and
incomparably more than it will know under the sway of
atheism and socialism. God treats faithful nations as he
treats faithful individuals : 4 All these things shall be added
,unto you ’ ” (1).

In the National Archives of France there is preserved a
register of the accounts of the mines of Jacques Coeur in the
Lyonnais and the Beaujolais, dated 1455. This document,
;given to the light in 1890 (2), shows the condition of the
miners at a time when, according to most modern publicists,
there was no ordinary comfort for the workingman. Accord-
ing to this register, the mines were in the charge of a
“ governor ” ; but the decisions of that official were subject,
on the appeal of the miners, to the judgment of a repre-
sentative of the king, who was specially charged with the
preservation of their privileges. The rules of the mines
were most stringent in regard to blasphemy and all matters
of immorality. The workmen were paid, for little more
than half a year’s labor, from two hundred to two thousand
francs, according to their skill and consequent position ; and
when we reflect on the cheapness of living at that time, and
on the fact that the miners were fed, clothed, lodged, and
doctored by the establishment, we shall realize that they
must have saved sufficient to ensure for themselves a
comfortable old age. This conclusion is well founded ; for
they were never allowed, unless in cases of real necessity,
to draw their wages in advance. The food of these work-
men was abundant and of the best quality — consisting of
beef, mutton, pork, fish, eggs, bread, cheese, spices, nuts,
and all kinds of fruit. They had as much white and red

<lj Recent Progress of History. Paris, 1893.

(2) In the France During the Hundred Ycai's ’ War , Historical Episodes and
Private Life in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries , by Simeon Luce , Member of
the Institute. Paris, 1890.

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wine as they desired. They slept in domitories near to the
kitchens of the establishments, so that in cold weather the
immense sleeping rooms might be heated by hot air carried
by pipes from the kitchen fires. A modern miner, especially
an English one, would wonder at a description of the resting-
place of these laborers. Each one had his own couch ;
and on it was a mattress, a feather-bed, linen sheets, two
blankets, a coverlet, and a pillow (1). The subterranean
tasks of these mediaeval miners did not last from January 1
to December 31 : many of them were owners of farms, and
at sowing time and harvest-tide they left the bowels of
the earth to attend to their crops. Certainly the picture
conjured by these two registers cannot be acceptable to
those who would fain believe that our mediaeval and Catholic
ancestors enjoyed neither comfort nor common-sense ; that
the lot of the modern workingman is immeasurably superior
to the apology for an existence which a Catholic society is
presumed to have decreed for the mediaeval laborer. But it
conveys some valuable lessons for us who live in a time of
charlatanical political and social economy.

IV. — The Lot of the Peasant.

When Chateaubriand declared that “ the peasant serf of the
Middle Age, partly soldier and partly laborer, was probably
less oppressed, less ignorant, and less rude than the free
peasant ” of later days (2), the decriers of the Age of Faith
hailed the remark as one of the many proofs that in the
author of The Genius of Christianity historical acumen
was less evident than poetical imagination. Nevertheless, a
universally acknowledged prince of historians in that day,
Augustin Thierry, at a time when his investigations had not
yet led him from rationalistic darkness to Catholic light,
had pronounced the feudal system — which was said to have

(1) It is a pity that Michelet, who thought that the sanitary features of the toilette were
habitually neglected by the mediaeval peoples ( “ not a bath in a thousand years ” ), could
not have read this passage concerning the bed for each miner. But what must have beeu
the surprise of M. Stupuy, that member of the Municipal Council of Paris who, Just before
the publication of this register, bad Informed bis colleagues that in the public institutions
of the Middle Age the beneficiaries were always consigned to rest at the rate of ” eight to
teu in each bed.”

(2) An Analysis of the History of France , Vol iti., p. 354. Paris, 1888.

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been a source of misery for the workers of mediaeval
Europe — “a necessary revolutions natural bond of defence
between the lords and the peasants, — a bond which originat-
ed on the one hand in the thing conferred, and on the other
hand in recognition of the gift (donum) and in the oath of
fidelity” (1). Undoubtedly the mediaeval lord exercised
many rights ; but he had also many duties, especially that
of protection to his vassals. Certainly the serf, in return
for the land which he had received from his lord, was obliged
to pay the “ tithes ” which are so universally misunderstood
by the worshippers of all that is modern ; but this burden
was far less grievous than those which crush the modern
peasant and workingman, especially in the Europe of our
day. It is not improbable that a fairly accurate idea of the
feudal regime may be formed by a contemplation of the
little Pyrenean republic of Andorra, a vassal of France, but
a survival of the many independent and happy republics of
the Middle Age (2). Happy in their vassalage to their lords,
the bishop of Urgel and the government of France, to whom
they pay what is almost a nominal “ tithe,” the Andorrans
might appropriate to themselves the saying of Tacitus, “ Plus
ibi boni mores valent quam alibi bonce leges” Of course the
unique conditions of Andorra exempt her from the miseries
of a society which was too prone to shed human blood in
intestine and foreign war ; but an unprejudiced eye will
discern that the little state has much in common with those
of the Middle Age. “ The erudite,” remarks Le Play, “ who
have investigated the condition of the European peasantry
of the olden time, without being blinded by the passions of
our day, have all arrived at the same conclusion. Faithful

(1) Considerations on the History of France. Paris, 1837.

(2) Charlemagne permitted the Andorrans to continue to govern themselves according to
their own customs, in recompense for their aid in his war against the Moors of Spain.
Afterward Louis le Debonnaire transferred part of his right of suzerainty over the Andor-
rans to the bishop of Urgel, thus making that prelate a co-suzerain with France,— a form
which still subists. As suzerains of Andorra, the bishop of Urgel and the French govern-
ment appoint two vi{juiers< who conjointly with the syndic of the Valley of Andorra decide
In all important cases. Ordinary matters are submitted to the twelve consuls whom the
people elect annually to represent the six parishes of the republic ; and these magistrate*
consult with the consuls of the previous year. Esch commune imposes its own taxes,
every citizen paying according to the revenue from his land or flocks. Primary instruc-
tion is more extensive in Andorra than in the contiguous districts belonging to France and
Spain.

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SOME SALIENT FEATURES OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 553*

pictures of the past show us peasants judging in their own
civil and criminal cases, paying very light taxes, and fixing
these in accordance with local necessities ; in fine, those
peasants yielded to an independent attraction toward their
lords, which could not be excited by any modern European
bureaucracy ” (1). “ In those days,” observes Duruy, “ no

tax could be levied without the consent of the parties affect-
ed ; no law was valid unless it had been accepted by those
who were to obey it ; no sentence was legitimate unless it
had been pronounced by the peers of the accused. Behold
the rights of the feudal society, — rights which the States-
General of 1789 found under the ruins of absolute monarchy.
The sentiment of the dignity of man, which despotism had
destroyed, was rediscovered. Mediaeval society, which shed
blood with so deplorable a facility, often exhibited a moral
elevation which can be found in no other age. The low
vices, the degradation of the Romans in their decadence,
were unknown in the Middle Age ; and that age bequeathed
the sentiment of honor to modern times ” (2).

About forty years ago the Abbe Defoumy, cure of Beau-
mont in Argonne, France, while delving among the musty
archives of his municipality, brought to light a document
which illustrates the relations which subsisted in the twelfth
century among the lords, citizens, and serfs of France. It
proved to be the famous Charter of Beaumont, given to his
people in 1182 by Guillaume de Champagne, cardinal-arch-
bishop of Reims and lord of Beaumofit.; and since the eminent
author declares that he simply ratifies existing customs , we
may be assured that his charter presents a faithful picture
of at least a large portion of French society in his day.
Guizot termed this charter “ one of the most liberal ” of the
Middle Age ; but we know that in every country of Europe
there were then in vigor customs analogous to those which
His Eminence of Reims confirms ; and it is certain that the
same charter, in all its details, was promulgated throughout
Lorraine by Duke Fery III. in 1270 (3). The cardinal shows

(1) Social Reform. Paris, 1880. (2) History of the Middle Age. Paris, 1875-

(3j Rom a in ; Was the Middle Age a Period of Darkness and of Servitude 1 Part*.
1800.

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that the political power in his jurisdiction of Beaumont
resided in himself as lord of the fief ; but we find no indica-
tion that he ever exercised such power, except to defend his
vassals from outside attack or to grant pardon when it could
be granted. He does not claim the right to appoint magis-
trates or judges or fiscal agents ; in fact, he gives no sign
that he ever interfered in the administration of justice. He
declares that he will never revoke any of the clauses in his char-
ter ; and although one of his successors in the see of Reims,
Richard Pique, transferred his rights to King Charles V., care
was taken that the new suzerain should promise to “ respect all
the stipulations of the charter of Guillaume de Champagne ” ;
and the said privileges were respected until the Revolution
of 1789. We adduce this Charter of Beaumont in order that
the reader may determine whether the lot of the mediaeval
peasant was, as is so frequently asserted, one of unmitigated
misery and despair. In the first place, we observe that every
peasant’s “ hut ” (if the reader prefers that term) was heated
without any expense to himself : the communal forest fur-
nished him all the wood that he required for comfort and
for cooking. His lamp was supplied with oil made from
the beech-nuts which the lord of the soil allowed him to
gather in the manorial woods, and he could sell to the deni-
zens of the nearest city all the superfluous oil that he could
manufacture. The communal forest and the woods of the
lord also furnished the peasant with the timber which he
needed for building purposes ; and from the same sources he
obtained wild apple and pear trees, which by cultivation
(since arboriculture was then an art far better and more
universally understood than it is in these days) became orna-
ments to the peasant’s acres and beneficent purveyors for his
table. Generous wine was at the easy command of this
needlessly-pitied man ; for all around him grapes were com-
mon property. And we may note in passing that his modern
successor wrould be much more happy if he used such wine
in abundance, instead of the foul spirits which were unknown
to the average peasant of the Middle Age. Much has been
written concerning the discomforts of the peasant domiciles
in this olden time ; but we note that the Charter of Beaumont

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555

informs us that each commune, at least in that jurisdiction,
operated a tile-factory which furnished coverings for every
peasant’s roof. This item alone would justify the opinion
that the mediaeval “ hut ” was more sanitary than at least
half of its modern successors in the most progressive coun-
tries of the world. Did our space permit, we could dilate on
this matter of the domestic economy of the mediaeval dwell-
ers in the fields ; and the result would not flatter the intelli-
gence of many “ educators ” of our modern youth. We must
dismiss this feature, however, with one reflection. Famine
was nearly an impossibility in mediaeval Europe. Each
commune had a common pasture ground — la vaine pdture , —
on which any individual, domiciled or houseless, comfortably
situated or destitute, could find sustenance for one cow and for
one goat or sheep. It is not strange, therefore, that pauper-
ism, that plague which modern society vainly endeavors to neu-
tralize through mercenary agents, was impossible in the rural
districts of that time. And it would seem that free-trade, if not
as to the word, certainly as to the thing, was familiar to the
mediaeval peasant ; for the Charter of Beaumont declares : “ It
shall be lawful for you to buy aijd sell whatever you may de-
sire, without paying us any tax whatsoever.” No wonder that
the Protestant De Tocqueville was constrained to avow that
in spite of the many advantages of modern civilization, “ the
condition of the peasant was better in the thirteenth than in
the eighteenth century ” (1). If the economists are right
when they assert that a density of population is an indication
of prosperity, at least rural France of the eleventh, twelfth, and
thirteenth centuries must have been remarkably happy ; for
although the science of statistics is of modern birth, such
investigators as Dureau de la Malle and Simeon Luce have
furnished indications which seem to evince that the rural
population of the France of to-day is less numerous than
the same population in that early period.

But was not serfdom a running sore among the populations
of the Middle Age V No ; a thousand times no ! Serfdom,
a vestige of ancient pagan slavery, was gradually disappear-
ing throughout the Middle Age, being continually pressed

(l) The Old Regime and the Revolution , Bk. liM eta. 12. Paris, 1856.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

by the triumphant advance of the Christian civilization
which the Catholic Church had created. “ How many per-
sons,” exclaims Lecoy de La Marche, “ even to-day imagine
that the Middle Age was the halcyon time of serfdom, and
that the existence of a caste of slaves was one of the essential
foundations of its social constitution ! But the truth is
diametrically contrary to this assertion. The Middle Age
waged incessant war against serfdom as a principle ; it sub-
stituted for crying abuses alleviations which became more
and more efficacious, and finally it abolished the evil de
facto . When it bequeathed the rule of the European
populations to the modern states, serfdom had long been a
mere memory or a name. Already in the thirteenth century
it had become rare ; in Normandy and in many other parts
of France it had disappeared entirely ” (1). France is
generally supposed by the poor dupes of certain English and
German historiasters to have been, until the “ glorious ”
days of 1789, a veritable holocaust to the mediaeval Catholic
love of slavery ; and it has suited the purpose of French
Yoltaireans and atheists to swell the chorus which must
necessarily try to besmirch the fame of the Spouse of
Christ. But it is certain that in the beginning of the four-
teenth century serfdom was legally abolished in France ;
and that before the end of the fifteenth century — before the
dawn of the Renaissance — there were no longer any of those
who, despite the royal decrees, had persisted in regarding
themselves as serfs (2). We hear certain readers demand-
ing whether it can be possible that any sane human beings
could have insisted upon their right to remain in serfdom.
Such was the case when Louis X. declared that “ in the
land of the Franks no man should be a serf ” ; force was
required ere thousands of the serfs could be brought to
recognize the new order of things. Such was the case in
our day when the Russian Czar, Alexander II., incited by

(1) History of St. Louis . Paris, 1891.

(2) The coryphees of the Revolutiou and the generality of the Masonic tribe continually
laud, usque ad nauseam, the decree of August 4, 1789, by which the French National
Assembly pretended to abolish serfdom in France. They wish us to Ignore the fact that
Louis XVI. himself had Issued a similar degree in 1778; and that even this ordonnance
affected only a few light burdens which had survived the march of centuries rather a*
archaeological curiosities than as objects of serious attention.

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Napoleon III., emancipated the serfs of his empire. Nor
was this fact worthy of enumeration among phenomenal
aberrations of human perversity. The serf was by no
means a slave ; no medieval serf could have even dreamt of
being visited by such horrors as were the almost constant
concomitants of American slavery, or by such as were
solemnly sanctioned by the pagan Roman jurisprudence.
The serf, to use the words of Eginhard, the secretary of
Charlemagne, was a vassal of an inferior degree ; and his
own immediate superior — his “ lord ” — was merely a vassal
of a higher degree. The serf had no master, but a patron ;
he was master of his own person, but he had certain obliga-
tions and duties toward his lord, who recompensed his
fidelity by efficacious protection. The serf drew his susten-
ance from a piece of land, the high domain of which was
reserved by the lord to himself, but of which the serf was a
kind of half-proprietor. Of course the serf was “ attached to
the glebe ” ; and this phrase is offensive to certain modern
ears. But is not the modern mechanic bound to the means
which gain his livelihood? the merchant to his business?
The serf could not abandon his glebe ; but neither could he
ruin himself by mortgaging it. If he fell ill, his lord took
care of him ; if his cattle died, his lord replaced them ; if
he or his family were attacked, his lord defended him.
“ While the lord was owner of the soil,” says Guerard, “ he
could not dispossess its inhabitants. The residents on his
territory had become, through custom, real proprietors ;
whereas in olden days they had been tenants. If the lord
wished to sell his domain, he did so without ousting the
serfs : he acted as a monarch acts when he cedes a province.”
Does the reader perceive much practical difference, so \ far
as this matter of attachment to the glebe is concerned, be-
tween the lot of the mediaeval serf and that of the English
or Irish tenant who leases a piece of ground for a hundred
years ? Such difference as we perceive is in favor of the
serf, especially when we note this sentiment uttered by the
Abbe Defourny in his commentary on the Charter of Beau-
mont : “ In the twelfth century, after the serf had improved
his land, the lord gave to that serf a right of property in

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

that improved land, together with full liberty to transmit it
to his descendants, without payment of any right of succes-
sion or any other tax. Then the serf could say to himself
while he was improving his farm : ‘ This soil, watered with

my sweat, belongs to me and my children ; at each stroke
of the spade I take possession. The lord asks for only
one-seventh of the crop ; therefore my labor is well reward-
ed, and from generation to generation my posterity will
possess the land which I have fertilized.’ But the tenant-
farmer of the nineteenth century must say: ‘I have

improved this land, but it belongs to the landlord. After
a few years, when I am old, when the lease has expired, I.
shall be ordered to move with my children to some other
farm, which, in its turn, after being improved by me, will,
still belong to the landlord.’ ”

Now a few words in explanation of certain burdens suf-
fered by the mediaeval peasant, which at first sight may
perhaps appear to blur the pleasing picture which we have
drawn. In the Middle Age the peasant was subjected to
the payment of tithes, ecclesiastical and temporal ; to the
law of pursuit, to the law of mainmorte, and to the right of
forismarifagium. As to the payment of tithes, we may
observe that it was not peculiarly a mediaeval institution :
it was instituted by Moses, and we find it in force among
the Christians of the fifth century ; it exists to-day in Eng-
land (1). We find no records of complaints of the excess-
iveness of ecclesiastical tithes during the Middle Age ;
indeed, such complaints would have been absurd, since,
although the term “ tithe ” indicates a tenth, the tax was
seldom so large, and was frequently only one-twentieth of
the crop. When Vauban submitted his work on The Royal
Tithe to Louis XIV., he urged the monarch to take the ancient
ecclesiastical tithe as the model for the tax which he advised
Louis to decree ; for, said he, “ the ecclesiastical tithe has
excited no complaints since it was established, and we have
never found that it has been the occasion of corrupt prac-

(1) At present tithes in hind are not collected in England for the benefit of the clergy
of the Royal Establishment. In 1835 it was ordered that they should be paid in money,
the value being determined by the average receipts from the crops during the preceding
■even years. They amount to about forty millions of dollars.

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tices. Of all taxes, it requires the fewest collectors, it entails
the smallest expenses, and it is the most easily and gently
raised.” And let us not forget that the ecclesiastical tithe
was always payable in kind , or in the products of the soil ;
so that in times of failure of crops the peasant paid nothing.
On the contrary, the greater number of secular taxes, being
payable in money, were often grievous burdens to the taxed.
The decriers of the mediaeval tithe should study the econ-
omic conditions of the rural populations of France, as they
now subsist under the Third Republic, the foremost Euro-
pean representative of all that is peculiarly modern in our
civilization. On January 21, 1884, M. Pouyer-Quertier
showed the French Senate that agriculture paid thirty
per cent, of its revenue in taxes, and industrial property paid
twenty per cent.

We do not hear much concerning the presumed burden of
the “ law of pursuit, ” since it was fairly reasonable, and
was seldom executed to the letter. By virtue of this right,
the lord of the soil could pursue and capture a serf who
abandoned his tenure. It is certain, however, that in
practice the serf could, by means of the payment of a small
sum, and by the fulfilment of his other obligations, gener-
ally obtain the right to reside where he desired. A differ-
ent judgment must be emitted in regard to the “ law of
mainmorte” According to this law, the serf could leave to
his natural heirs only a small portion of his movable prop-
erty, the greater part accruing to his lord ; and against
this prohibition the Church continually thundered. The
curious student of the Middle Age, one who delights in
reading the quaint but frequently sublime sermons of that
time, knows how often the preachers compared the nobles
to vultures pouncing on a corpse. It was this fact, this
difference* bet ween their spiritual guides and their temporal
lords — the latter too often worthy precursors of our modern
liberals, — that caused the peasants of the Age of Faith to
declare that “it is well to live under the crosier.” However,
this tremendous evil, like many other loudly-published
abuses of the Middle Age, was frequently attenuated.
Lecoy de La Marche observes that it generally affected only

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

the isolated serf : “ If the serf had established a kind of
-community with his natural heirs, residing with them on the
land which he cultivated, his goods passed to them. Very
often this course was adopted in order to overcome the legal
obstacle : the community subsisted after his death, and
therefore naturally succeeded to him. It succeeded, in the
same manner, to all of its successively deceased members,
successively replacing them. These associations of farm-
laborers, entitled ‘ tacit societies,’ eventually constituted, in
-certain localities, veritable little agricultural republics.”

The right of forismaritagium was, for a time, undoubtedly
the most obnoxious, as it is still the most famous, of all the
burdens which the mediaeval peasant was called to bear. As
is partly iiylicated by the etymology of the word, it was an
-exemption from a feudal proscription which forbade the
marriage of a serf with a woman of superior condition who
resided in another lordship ; and the reason or pretext for
the prohibition had been based on the supposition that such
a union might " diminish the fief ” by depriving it of the
services of persons who ought to have been born within its
limits. That this theory was a relic of pagan slavery was
evident ; and the Church, ever zealous for the freedom and
the honor of Christian matrimony, resisted its actuation as a
tyranny which could have no invalidating effect on a Sacra-
ment pertaining to her sole custody. The nobles ultimately
abandoned their claim so far as to permit the undesirable
unions, on condition that they received from the bride-
grooms a sum of money (varying from three cents to sixty
cents), as an acknowledgment of their presumed jurisdiction
in the premises. Such was the meaning of the forismari-
tagium at the beginning of the twelfth century ; but very
frequently the fine, or tribute, was solved by the presentation
of a fancy cake, or even by a gymnastic exhibition before
the lord and his retainers (1).

V. — Hospitals.

So vivid was the spirit of religion in the Middle Age, that
tmusic, architecture, and all the arts were brought into

(1) See the Glossary of Ducange, art. Forismaritagium.

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requisition to extemate this noblest sentiment that can fill
the heart of man ; and the choicest flowers of language were
culled, and made to join in the general homage to the
Creator. Most of the beautiful expressions which so im-
press us in our devotional and ascetic works were then
coined. Nowhere more than in the service of charity were
the tender capabilities of language, the poetry of which it
is capable, adapted to Christian use. Thus when speaking
of those who were in dire want, oi*r ancestors in the faith
styled them pauper es nostri — our poor; and the establish-
ments in which their necessities were supplied were called
Houses of God, a term perpetuated by Catholic France in
every Hotel Dieu. The necessitous were theirs, because these
were especially dear to God ; they were theirs to love and
succor ; and when our ancestors went on errands of mercy
into the refuges of the needy, they felt that only when
before the Tabernacle were they nearer to God. Animated
by such a spirit, it is no wonder that scarcely had they
emerged from the Catacombs, when the early Christians
founded on every side asylums destined to every category of
misery : brephotrophia, gerontocomia , xenodochia , ptoclieia ,
orphanotrophia , — for children, the aged, the stranger, the
hungry, the orphan. St. Jerome tells us that in the time of
Fabiola, one of the founders of such institutions — that noble
woman, whose fame Cardinal Wiseman has so beautifully
perpetuated, — the healthy poor used to envy the “ lot of the
sick.” From the eighth century the most famous hospitals
were those devoted to lepers ; and in the thirteenth century,
says Matthew Paris, these amounted to nineteen hundred ;
but by the fifteenth this scourge had almost entirely yielded
to Catholic heroism.

The Catholics of the Middle Age really loved the poor ;
for they saw in them the members of the suffering Jesus
Christ. Our love is more platonic ; for too often it has its
source in a vague “ philanthropy ” rather than in the ardor
of faith. .Hence it is that we erect immense, grandiose
establishments, uniform monuments to the vanity, proba-
bly, of their founders, and fill them with as many sufferers
as we can — the more, the better for the reputation of the

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY*

managers, etc. But it is certain that until very lately — and
not even now in most cases — the comfort of every individ-
ual patient has been less studied in hospitals of modern
foundation than have deceitful and unprofitable appearances.
Modern philanthropists, in their zeal to claim for the nine-
teenth century every advance in the realms net only of
science and of physical comfort for the masses, but in that
of consideration for the afflicted, confidently point to the
introduction of the pavilion system (and in how many insti-
tutions has that been adopted ?) ; ignoring the fact that said
system was used in the Middle Age, and on a vastly greater
scale, as well as with more comforting adjuncts than moderns-
have yet attempted. Where the pavilion system was not
in use, something very nearly approaching it was in vogue.
The sick were encouraged in the illusion that they were not
in a public asylum — an object of horror to so many, — but
still at their own hearth-stones. Each one had a room to
himself, or at least the appearance of one. A judicious
author — one, by the way, not suspected of clericalism —
speaking of the prejudice of the common people agaiust hos-
pital treatment, says (1) : “ In the few hospitals of the Mid-
dle Age which are still extant, we find a spirit of charity well
understood and delicate. Without being richly ornate, the
buildings present a monumental aspect. The sick have
air, space, and light. They are separated one from the
other ; their individuality is respected ; and certainly if
there is one thing which is abominated by the unfortunate
who take refuge in these establishments, in spite of the in-
telligent care now accorded them, it is their dwelling to-
gether in vast wards. . . . The separate system has a great
advantage from a moral point of view, and it has emanated
from a noble sentiment of charity on the part of the numer-
ous founders of the ancient Mahons-Diev” One of the
most interesting illustrations of this olden respect for the
individuality of the patient is furnished us by M. Lecoy de
La Marche in an excellent article on this subject. It is the
grand Hospital of Tonnerre, founded bv a sister-in-law of St.
Louis IX. The great hall, or ward, was divided by suffl-

<1) V lOLLF.T i.e Due ; bictinmiru of Architecture , art. Hotel Dieu.

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cientlv high partitions, and a little above these a gallery ran
around the entire enclosure. Attendants could always ob-
serve the inmates without disturbing their equanimity.
The circulation of good air was perfect.

A very interesting book was published in 1887 by M. Leo
Legrand, of the Ecole des Charles at Paris, descriptive of the
hospital or asylum founded by St. Louis, under the name of
the Quinze-Vingts — the “Twenty Times Fifteen,” — from the
fact that it accommodated three hundred patients (1). It was
situated just outside of the capital, and was destined for the
poor who were blind. It is specially worthy of attention
as being an example of that system of separation — and even
of family life, though in the confines of a hospital, — which
we have indicated as so advantageous. No great, massive
structure frightened the visitor as he approached : he saw a
collection of residences, apparently inhabited by people of
the middle class. Some of these were occupied by a family,
others by one' individual. The blind formed a confrater-
nity— albeit not restricted to a religious rule, — and as an
independent body, they governed the establishment. Mar-
riages were celebrated in the community, but never between
two blind persons : one of the spouses should be capable of
managing the little household. Those who were not blind
were relatives or friends of the afflicted ; they formed part of
the society, and served as a kind of lay-brethren to the
wants of the blind. Both parties wore a uniform of sub-
stantial material, with a lily on the left breast. Each house-
hold did its own cooking, ate by itself, and “ the ipother,”
as the community was called, supplied the food. All the
members met at stated times for pious exercises. The
children w ere apprenticed to trades, or w^ere sent to school
while the blind themselves were generally taught music,
that being, in the Middle Age, a profession specially followed
by the so afflicted. The governing body of this miniature
republic was a Chapter, composed of women as well as men ;
the sovereign being represented by his grand almoner as
presiding officer. One must not suppose that the Hospital

(1) The Quinze- VinQtx From Their Foundation, in the Collection of the Society of His-
tory of Paris, 1887.

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of Quinze - Vingts was unique in its care for the blind : from
the first days of Christian freedom, there were similar insti-
tutions, although not on the same1 plan, in Syria and in
many parts of Europe.

But it was not in well-organized hospitals alone that the
poor of the Middle Age found relief from their physical
woes. A multitude of local congregations were dedicated to
their consolation ; St Vincent de Paul and his heroic Sisters
of Charity had their forerunners in those Ages of Faith.
There were thousands of Brothers and Sisters aggregated to
the service of the sick outside the precincts of organized
establishments. These did not form a united congregation,
depending from one head ; but, considering the circumstances
of the time, the general spirit of decentralization then
prevalent in every order, political and ecclesiastical, the
system worked very well (1). Perhaps, however, this sep-
aratist tendency was the cause of the disappearance of these
“ fraternities ” in the sixteenth . century ; and certainly St.
Vincent de Paul was divinely inspired when he resuscitated
them, giving them all the prestige and influence which result
from unity. In the Middle Age these societies, just like the
Conferences of St. Vincent nowadays, carried aid and con-
solation into the homes of the afflicted ; governed, remarks
M. de La Marche, “ by the idea that the unfortunate should
continue to enjoy the family life, the associations of the
domestic hearth.” This practice of extending domiciliary
Telief was common even during the persecutions of the first
Christian centuries ; to do so was one of the chief duties of
the deacons ; and owing to this touching office the members
of the modern Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul are often

0) “When we reflect,” remarks M. de La Marche, “on the extreme divisions of the
; society of that day, on the differences in customs and language subsisting between the
• different provinces, and on the difflculties of travelling, we may ask ourselves whether
distinct organizations— the separatist system, in fine— was not a hundred times preferable
in the circumstances. Just in proportion as distances are lessened, as kingdoms agglom-
erate. as the larger countries absorb the smaller, centralization becomes a political and
social necessity. But in the olden time the contrary system insinuated itself [into national
and social polity!, and it worked as much good then as it would now effect harm. And
remember that an identity of spirit and of sentiment united these charitable communities
lin very close bonds : all these Brothers and Sisters were equally animated by a love for
suffering humanity, and all met in that Divine Heart where this supernatural love
originates.”

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styled “lay-deacons.” When the great abbeys came into
existence, each one very soon established an infirmary for the
poor ; and to these was joined a subsidiary service extended
by men and women living in the world, who made regular
domiciliary visits io the sick.

The latest biographer of St. Margaret of Cortona (1) be-
lieves that the Poverelle , founded by her in her native city,
are the earliest examples of Sisters of Charity known in the
Middle Age. Indisputable documents show that such de-
voted women were at their beneficent work centuries before
the time of St. Margaret ; nevertheless, the Poverelle were a
most interesting community. Led by a spirit of penance
and reparation for a scandalous early life (2), Margaret joined
the Third Order of Si Francis, placing before herself two
great objects — the maintenance of peace among the feudal
nobles and between the city factions, and the alleviation of
human misery. She became, in fine, an angel of peace and
an apostle of mercy. She founded at Cortona a refuge for
pilgrims and other travellers, and a hospital for the sick
poor. This latter establishment she herself served, assisted
by a number of zealous women whom her fervor had drawn
around her. A local Sisterhood was soon formed, and the
people denominated it the Congregation of the Poverellef
or Little Poor Ones. St. Margaret soon joined to these
Tertiaries a number of independent confraternities, who
should spread the benefits of her work among the Cortonese
in their own homes. This latter association extended a
special care to the bashful but really needy, of whom there
are so many in every large city. The director was a prior
elected for six months from among the secular clergy, and he
was assisted by six counsellors, a treasurer, a secretary, and
a standard-bearer. Besides its directly beneficent visits to
the poor, this forerunner of the Conferences of St. Vincent
de Paul exercised a social and political role . Let not any
hypercritical worshipper of the State, like his friends the
advocates of the “ separation ” of the Church and State in

(1) Leopold de Cherance ; Life of St. Margaret of Cortona. Paris, 1887.

(2) This saint, who Is well styled tbe Mary Magdalen of Italy, bad passed nine years o£
her youtb in a sinful alliance.

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Europe, affect to be scandalized at this presumedly clerical
interference in political matters. A momentary reflection
on the nature of this interference will show that it was
for the good of society ; and that, far from retarding, it
advanced progress and civilization. When civil war was
imminent, or when any disorder threatened the peace of the
community, the gonfaloniere or standard-bearer seized the
banner of the Confraternity, rushed to the principal Square,
and, summoning his brethren around him, explained the
state of'affairs, and dispatched them in every direction to
preach union, concord, and patriotism.

VI. — The Lot of the Lepers.

Much has been written concerning the lazaretti of the olden
time ; but a mere modicum of truth has been imparted by
either the false humanitarians, the sentimental romancers, or
the irreligious historians who have handled the theme with
the object of decrying the Catholic Church. “ Michelet and
his school have seized on the phantom of leprosy, shaking
>it, just as the leper himself used to shake his rattle to fright-
en the passer-by. According to these writers, leprosy was a
consequence of the filthiness of our ancestors. People
never washed in the Middle Age ; therefore leprosy was the
result of a spontaneous generation in the dung-hill on which
society was rotting. And since the Catholic Church had
formed medkeval society to her own image, she alone was
responsible for the ravages of the terrible malady. And the
♦Church not only originated leprosy, but she persecuted its
victims. She thrust the unfortunates into loathsome huts,
banishing them forever from human society ; she cruelly
condemned them to be devoured by the fire in their frames,
augmenting their physical sufferings by the tortures of
perpetual solitude. The theme has become hackneyed (1).”
Nor are there wanting some Catholic writers who have
assisted in propagating false notions as to the lot of the
lepers in the Middle Age. Even the tender Xavier de
Maistre forgot, or perhaps was unaware, that the strict
isolation of the leprous was not enforced before the dying

(1) Ljecoy de La Marche ; Lepers and Leper-Houses. Paris, 1892.

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agonies of the Middle Age had begun, — in that fourteenth
century when men’s hearts had commenced to lose some of
the charity which had characterized the Middle Age in its
Catholic fulness ; and hence it was that the sympathetic were
invited to pity the woes of the Leper of Aosta in pages where
pathos strives with exaggeration for prominence. Xavier
de Maistre should have known that in the Middle Age the
lot of the leper was diametrically the opposite of that which
he depicted. When treating of the hospitals of the Middle
Age, we showed that the constant aim of our Catholic ances-
tors was to furnish the sick with all the benefits accruing
from a union of independence with a community life ; and
this beneficent idea was actuated in the case of the leprous,
just as with the sick from other causes. No sooner had
Catholic Europe realized the fell nature of the evil which
the returning (^rusaders brought from the pagan East, than
the generosity of the faithful erected and endowed thousands
of institutions for an amelioration of the lot of the afflicted.
If the reader would like to know the characteristics of these
lazaretti (also styled maladreries and Uproseries)y we shall
not regale him with the product of a feverish imagination,
but present to his consideration the regulations of one of
these establishments which was founded in the thirteenth
century.

Probably the reader is familiar with at least the names of
the chief Societies of France, developments of that principle
of association which our century has borrowed from the
Middle Age, and which have merited so well of the science
of history. Great is the fame of the Societe Bibliograpliique,
whose name indicates its programme very imperfectly; of
the Societe de 1’ Ecole des Chartes, which has really founded
a school of serious historical criticism in France ; and of the
Societe de 1’ Histoire de France, which has proved worthy of
its founders (1833) — Guizot, Thiers, Pasquier, Barante, Count
Mole, Champollion-Figeac, etc. But throughout France
there are many minor Societies working on lines more or less
similar to those occupied by these more famous organiza-
tions ; and every now and then the records of their sittings
show how some indefatigable member has unearthed a

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STUDIES m CHURCH HISTORY.

precious monument of the past, a study of which sheds much
light upon some important matter of history which has hither-
to been beclouded or travestied. Among these societies
the least distinguished is not the Societe Academique de
Saint-Quentin ; and in 1891 one of its impartial and disin-
terested members drew forth from the musty archives of
Noyon a document which demolishes completely the theories
of the school of Michelet regarding the lepers of the Middle
Age. M. Abel Lefranc read to his fellow-academicians, and
illustrated with apposite and erudite commentaries, a collec-
tion of rules for the leper-house of Noyon, which had been
composed by Mgr. Yermond de la Boissiere, who occupied
the See of Noyon in 1250-1272. The reader shall judge
whether the generally accepted opinion in regard to the olden
leper-houses is well founded, — whether these establishments
were hideously loathsome habitations ; whether the regula-
tions governing their inmates were pitilessly severe ; whether
no one approached the abodes of misery without terror;
whether the unfortunates were really obliged to ring a bell,
or sound a rattle, as warning to the wayfarer to flee their
presence ; whether they were strangers to even those joys
and distractions which were permitted to the galley-slaves ;
whether, in fine, the lepers were truly “ living-dead,” pain-
fully awaiting a final dissolution which would free them
from the implacable anathema which a Catholic society had
launched against them. In the first place, the code of rules
promulgated by the good bishop of Noyon proves that the
lepers in his establishment occupied a more than tolerable
position, since the prelate was obliged to obviate an abuse
of the privileges of the lazaretto, on the part of healthy and
well-to-do persons who frequently wished to join the com-
munity. We have already had occasion to notice how, even
in the fourth century, many of the poor envied the compara-
tively happy lot of the sick, the crippled, the blind, whom
the Catholic asylums supported and protected. A similar
envy was often expressed in the Middle Age in regard to
the lot of the lepers. So numerous and striking were the
advantages of residence in the lazaretto that the managers
could not satisfy all who begged as a favor to be admitted*

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even u,t the risk of contracting the horrible disease. “ This’
strange yearning for a life in the leper-house,” observed M.
Lefranc, “ is easily explained. We must remember that
most of these institutions were richly endowed, having
extensive territorial possessions, and therefore receiving
revenues far more than sufficient for their support. In those
days no person made a will without leaving large legacies
to charitable establishments, and especially to the leper-
houses. In time the property of these abodes of misery
became enormous. Then life in them was easy, and even lav-
ishly sustained. There was nothing onerous in the labors
which most of the lepers performed : they merely cultivated
the lands near to the asylum, the rest being leased to
farmers. We can easily perceive how many persons, in spite
of certain inconveniences, sought to find refuge in these
tranquil homes.”

But, above all, we must remember that the spirit of the
Middle Age was pre-eminently one of charity and self-sacri-
fice, actuated in the hope of pleasing God by succoring the
creatures for whom He died. Therefore many were attracted
to the leper-house, not merely in the hope of finding tran-
quillity, but by the more commendable intention of assuaging
the sufferings of God’s children. Damiens were common in
the Middle Age. He who has read even in a cursory manner
the lives of the saints who lived in that period of exuberant
faith, knows that there is no exaggeration in this assertion.
Who were the attendants, the nurses, of the lepers ? Ignor-
ant and heartless mercenaries of the State ? Praters about
philanthropy — blatant friends of abstract humanity, with no
real affection for the concrete man ? No ! Such persons can-
not furnish the material out of which the Church fashions
an Elizabeth of Hungary or a John of God — saints whom
she has duplicated thousands of times, and will continue to
duplicate when the laicizers of her institutions of charity
shall have sunk into oblivion, or be remembered only to be
condemned by men of common-sense. The reader knows
that in many monasteries and convents there are two kinds of
religious : those of the choir (a species of religious aristoc-
racy) and the lay-Brothers or lay-Sisters. The menial offices

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

of the establishments — a means to gain heaven equal to tLe
more intellectual offices performed by the choir religious —
are the province of the convtrsi, or lay-brethren. Now, in
the leper-houses, who were the aristocrats of the institutions,
and who the servants ? The loathsome lepers were the
honored patients and masters ; the nurses, guardians, and
servants of these unfortunates were healthy, even wealthy
persons, who had given themselves to the service of Christ in
the guise of His afflicted members. These heroic souls
formed a religious confraternity, under the immediate and
exclusive authority of the bishop ; but the immediate super-
intendence of the community, lepers and all, was confided to
a “ master ” and to a “ council,” all elected by the lepers.
The sexes were separated ; the male volunteers attending to
the men, and the female volunteers to the women. All
the inmates were required, one year after their entrance,
whether lepers or nurses, to take simple vows of chastity and
obedience; the vow of poverty was optional. All dis-
pensations from the rule, all punishments, were pronounced
by the “ master.” The punishments varied according to the
gravity of the fault A very flagrant offence was followed by
perpetual exclusion ; then there were temporary banishment,
a deprivation of some choice but unnecessary article of food,
a deprivation of wine, etc. All who were able, took their
meals in the refectory. The inmates wore a uniform ; but, as
M. Lefranc gathered from the Noyon rule, “ this dress pre-
sented nothing of that sombre and repulsive aspect of which
we often hear.” The men wore a plain skirt and a wide-
sleeved mantle. The mantle of a woman was of lamb’s wool,
and she wore a rather coquettish head-dress. Each leper
had an excellent bed and plenty of clean linen. No leper
was allowed to enter the kitchen or the bakery, but all the
rest of the establishment was open to them. Every possible
provision was made for the most minute and scrupulous
cleanliness of person, as well as of every nook and corner of
the institution. There were numerous fountains ; but, quite
properly, certain of these were restricted to the use of the
uninfected inmates — a necessary provision. The utmost
care was devoted to the spiritual interests of the lepers.

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571

They had a beautiful church, and a chaplain always at hand.
Games of chance were prohibited, but all other means of
recreation were provided.

Certainly this picture of the leper-house of Noyon is very
different from that presented by those who can discern no
good in medieval times, and whose denunciation is always in
strict proportion to their ignorance of even the salient charac-
teristics of those days. But it may be retorted that this
rule of Bishop Yermond de la Boissiere shows the good
treatment of lepers in only one isolated instance. We are
fully justified in supposing that the lazaretto of Noyon may
be regarded as a specimen of all the leper-houses of the time ;
because, firstly, no mediaeval documents can be adduced to
evince the contrary ; and secondly, because we know that
more than a century before the birth of La Boissiere there
were in Europe over 19,000 well-organized leper-houses,
most of which were served by the members of the Order of
St. Lazarus, which had been instituted for that purpose.

VII. — A Typical Bishop op the Middle Age.

When that great Scholastic, Peter the Lombard, he who
was termed the “ Master of Sentences,” went to his heavenly
reward in 1160, the Chapter of Paris deemed it proper to
consult King Louis VII. as to their choice of a new bishop
for the capital of France. His Majesty asked the canons
for the names of such clergymen of the diocese as seemed
most worthy of the mitre. Only two candidates — Master
Maurice and Peter Le Mangeur — were selected ; and when
the monarch asked for information as to their comparative
merits, he was told that Maurice was very zealous in leading
souls to heaven, but that Peter was better versed in the
Scriptures. Then the king pronounced his decision : “ Let
Maurice govern the diocese, and let Peter manage its schools.”
And the chroniclers tell us that “ so it was arranged, and
everybody was well pleased.” Thus the mitre was placed
on the head of Maurice de Sully, the enlightened prelate who
was to bequeath to Parisian piety that grand and perhaps
imperishable monument which every French revolution has
respected — the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. This bishop of

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Paris was not, as his name would seem to indicate, a member
of a noble family ; still less was he of the stock which pro-
duced the celebrated minister of Henry IV. The family of
Master Maurice was so lowly in social station that the chron-
iclers of the day have not transmitted its name to us, and
probably because they knew nothing concerning it. In his
case the particle de is not significant of nobility. His family
name having been unknown, the distinguished cleric came to
be styled Maurice de Sully, because he was born in the
village of Sully, in the department of Loiret. Maurice had
left this village in quest of an education, and in the guise of
a “ poor scholar,” literally begging from door to door for his
daily bread. It was to no “ little red school-house ” that
the ambitious lad had recourse for instruction ; but to the
gratuitous courses which were about to give birth to the
grand University of Paris, and which had recently been
rendered illustrious by the lectures of Peter the Lombard,
William of Champeaux, and Abelard. There was, of course,
in the twelfth century no dearth of such establishments for
primary education as the “ little red school-house ” is some-
times supposed to represent. As the not too clerical J. J.
Ampere avowed to the French Institute in 1837, “ Even in the
days of Charlemagne there iv ere probably more primary schools
than there are to-day ” (1).

In the Middle Age, observed Duruy, a minister of the
Second Empire who was not always favorable to the rights
of parents in the matter of education, “ the Church, then the
depositary of all knowledge, distributed gratuitously the bread
of the mind, just as she gave to all the bread of the soul.
Nor do I speak merely of monasteries — institutions into
which the poorest man was admitted, and out of which he
often came a bishop or perhaps a Pope, like Gregory VII. or
Sixtus V. ; I allude to other schools. The decrees of the
Popes and of Councils attest the desire of the clergy to
multiply free schools for the poor ” (2). In fact, when the
little Maurice proposed to himself a search for an education.

(1) History of Literature under Charlemagne. Paris, 1841.

(2) “ Report of 1863 on the Freedom of Primary Instruction .” By M. Victor
Duruy , Minister of Public Instruction .

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lie saw no arduous task before him. The number of students
then in Paris, the majority of whom were “ poor scholars,”
nearly equalled that of all the other inhabitants. In a few
years Philip Augustus was obliged to extend the limits of
the city, in order to accommodate the votaries of science ••
for their number had increased to 20,000 — an attendance
of which no modern University can boast, even though the
populations of Christendom have multiplied tenfold since the
twelfth century. Therefore it was that as Maurice entered
the capital of France, where the great Benedictine statesman,
Suger, was guiding the helm of state with a zeal and success
such as have never been displayed by any minister of modern
times, he had no reason to complain that the Cnurch of his
day or the Christian royalty of France — the creation of that
Church — had become hostile or indifferent to popular educa-
tion. Maurice felt a justifiable pride, pauper though he was,
when he reflected that he was about to become a resident of
*the great “city of philosophers,” as Paris was then termed,
just as Bologna was termed “ the city of jurists.” His pride
assumed a holy tin'ge when he remembered that whatever
course of study he should elect to follow, Holy Mother the
Church would regard him as under her special protection,
and would proclaim through her Canons that, as a student,
his person was inviolable (1).

A prolific but not always reliable chronicler of the
thirteenth century asserts that when the canons of the
Cathedral Chapter of Paris were debating as to a successor
to Peter the Lombard, it occurred to them that the election
might be effected more easily if it were entrusted to three
of their number ; that the three were delegated ; and that
one of these, Maurice de Sully, prevailed on his associates
to place the mitre of Paris on his brow. This story is con-
tradicted by the well-evidenced humility of Master Maurice,
by the direct testimony of the contemporary and otherwise
trustworthy Etienne de Bourbon (2), and by the incontesta-
ble fact tliat’tlie alleged manner of election was as foreign

(1) Du Boulay ; History of the University of Paris , III., 93.

(2) Lecoy de La Marche ; The French Pulpit in the Middle Age. Paris, 1890.— Edi-
tion Etienne i.ic Btrurbon. Paris, 1891.

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STUDIES IN CHUKCH HISTORY.

to the mind of the Church of the twelfth century as it is to*
the will of the Church of our day. One illustration of he
humility of Master Maurice deserves mention, although the
reader may remember that he has read of similar incidents
in the lives of several bishops and in the case of at least one
pope. The mother of the new bishop had continued, during
her son’s scholastic and professorial career in Paris, to lead
the humble life of a peasant widow of that day ; but her
neighbors deemed such retirement unbefitting to the mother
of tbe bishop of Paris. Accordingly, by their own exertions
and with the aid of certain noble ladies, they procured for
her a magnificent outfit, and sent her, all bedecked and
bedizened, to congratulate her mitred Maurice. But, saya
the chronicler, when the poor woman entered the episcopal
presence, she found, to her dismay, that the son of her
bosom did not recognize her. “ My mother,” he exclaimed,
“ is an humble peasant, and she wears the commonest
clothes ! ” And not until his mother had retired, and had
donned the habiliments of her station, did Maurice de Sully
embrace her affectionately. A similar episode is related in
the various “Lives” of Mgr. Dupanloup, the celebrated
bishop of Orleans. As bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully
held, of course, a high rank among the temporal lords of the
kingdom ; but, like all the French prelates of his time —
prelates whose appointment was not due to the crown, — he
remembered that he was, above all else, a shepherd of
Christ’s flock. From the very beginning of his episcopal
career he seemed to think that he was living in one of those
early centuries when preaching was the chief duty of a
bishop, and his exclusive prerogative (1). He realized how-

(1) In the early days of Christianity, who had the right to preach? Origen (185-253)
says that “ the bishops, priests, and deacons teach us, and rebuke our vices with severe
words.” (Horn. 1 in Ps. xxxvii.) This remark, however, must be understood as applying,
in its absoluteness, only to the Eastern churches, which all, from the earliest days, observed
discipline inculcated in the (authentic or not) “Apostolic Canon, decreeing that any bishop
or priext who neglects his clergy or people, and does not teach them, is to be deposed.”
(.Vo. 57.) Eusebius tells us that Orlgen preached in Jerusalem and in Copsarea of Pales-
tine, and Socrates says that priests nreached in Cyprus and in Cappadocia. Many of St. Chrv-
sostom’s finest homilies were delivered before his elevation to the episcopacy. Certainly
the priests of Alexandria were forbidden to preach in the fourth century ; but this decree
was issued, as we are told by Socrates, Sozomencs, and Nicephorus, because of the audacity
of Arius. In the West, however, during the first centuries of Christianity, in most dlo-

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ever, that his was an age when it was not sufficient for
the parochial clergy to instruct their congregations by
means of homilies taken from the ancient Fathers. The
need of real preachers was great in the twelfth century ;
that need had not yet been supplied by the Orders which were
soon to be founded by Saints Dominic and Francis. Bishop
Maurice resolved to transform his priests, whenever possible,
into so many sacred orators. With this intention, he com-
posed for their use a collection of plans for sermons. And
for the benefit of such persons as believe, or feign to believe,
that in the Middle Age all spiritual works were couched in
Latin, we note that these models of discourses were written
in French, and — considering that the Age of Louis XIV.
had not yet arrived — in very elegant French. The reader
of these skeleton sermons perceives at once that they are
destined to become, after amplification, short but substantial
instructions for those who have just attended at the celebra-
tion of the parochial Mass. They are, in 'fact, excellent
models for those familiar but solid “ short sermons ” which
the French call prones. In them there is no display of zeal

ceses priests were not allowed to preach, at least In the presence of the bishop ; and in Africa
this rule was so strictly observed that it was not left to the discretion of the bishop to relax
it. Valerius, Bishop of Bona, seems to have been the first African bishop to allow a priest
to preach before him, and the privilege was granted to 8t. Augustine. So indignant did
the other African prelates show themselves because of this action of Valerius, that St.
Jerome was moved to write: “ The custom of some churches Imposing silence on priests
in the presence of their bishop, is abominable. One would think that the bishops are jeal-
ous or that they cannot condescend to listen/’ (Episl. ad Nepot.) In Gaul the discipline
varied. Gennadius, writingabout the year 470, speaks of Museus, a priest of Marseilles, as
preaching in 401 ; but it is certain that in many Gallic dioceses preaching was the special
office of the bishops, until the Council of Vaison decreed, in 529, that every parish should
frequently enjoy such ministration. In the Iberian Peninsula, as late as the year 619, we
find a Council of Seville establishing that no priest shall presume to preach in the pres-
ence of his bishop. However, we must not suppose that in those Western dioceses where
preaching was reserved to the bishop, the laity heard the word of God only on the rare
occasions of an episcopal visitation ; for at nearly every meeting of the faithful the pastor
read a homily of some Father. That deacons preached, even in the first days of the
Church, is evident from Holy Writ : this office of preacher caused Philip, one of the seven
deacons, to be styled an evangelist (^Icfs xxi.) St- Ignatius, who was martyred in the
year 107, praises the sermons of a deacon named Philo, and encourages the eloquence of
Hero, a deacon of Antioch. During the fearful persecutions of the first three centuries of
our era, the principal attention of the pagan tribunals was directed against the deacons,
not only because of the Church treasures of which they were the custodians, but on account
of their preaching office. It is interesting to observe here that in many dioceses of the
East it would have been impossible to adopt the Latin custom of restricting the obligation
of preaching to the bishop; for the Orientals had become so fond of sermons that frequently
one was followed by a second, and then by a third— generally, however, delivered by differ
ent clergymen. (Chrysostom ; Horn. 26 in Epiat. 1 ad Tim.)

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for science ; not even any leaning toward those scholastic
subtleties which are popularly supposed to have formed the
soul of every mediaeval intellectual effort Each sermon is
a simple explanation of the Gospel of the day, interspersed
with practical advice for the auditors. In the introduction
to his manual, the bishop insists on the preaching of the
divine word in season and out of season ; and he warns his
clergy that success will attend their efforts only when solid
attainments in sacred learning are joined to their holiness
of life. He advises each one to possess and to study con-
tinually the Sacramentary , the Lectionary , the Collection of
Penitential Canons , the Psalter , and the Calendar ; although
it is certain that in those days, when books were as rare and
costly as they were solid, a priest’s annual income would
scarcely have purchased any one of the works recommended.
The zeal of Maurice de Sully for the sanctification of his
people led him to request the celebrated Foulques de Neuilly,
the enthusiastic but prudent preacher of the Second Crusade,
to devote many of his later years to missions in every part of
the diocese of Paris ; and the chroniclers of that time grow
eloquent when they describe the consequent improvement of
morals in the French capital (1).

Although not the chief city of France in ecclesiastical digni-
ty (2), Paris, as capital of the kingdom, naturally surrounded
the mitre of Maurice de Sully with much of its own splendor.
During eight centuries the piety of monarchs and nobles had
so added to the estates possessed by the bishop of Paris,
that much of the time of Maurice was devoted to the cares
of their administration. The zeal of the prelate in this re-
gard has been well illustrated by instructive details in a work
published in 1890 by M. Mortet in the sixteenth volume of

(1) Otbo de S. Blasio, a Benedictine of Constance, tells us that, as a consequence of tbe
preaching of Foulques. many usurers and dishonest merchants and tradesmen frequently
threw themselves at his feet, avowed their guilt, and made restitution on the spot.
Wherever he preached, abandoned women would rush toward the pulpit, cut off their
tresses, and bewail their sins. Foulques procured husbands for some of these penitents ;
but so many desired to lead penitential lives in cloistered retirement, that he obtained
from the king, in their favor, tbe foundation of the Cistercian Abbey of St. Anthony.

(2) The archbishop of Lyons was primate of France until the Revolution of 1789 erased
nearly every ancient landmark in the kingdom. Although the see of Paris was established
in the third century by St. Denis (not by the Areopagite, as was once believed), it did not
. become &p archbishopric until 1622.

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the Memoirs of the Society for the History of Paris . But why
such a state of affairs ? Why, the hypercritical and the
anti-clerical may ask, should the Church countenance a sys-
tem which consumed time that ought to have been given to
the service of the altar ? And was so much wealth a benefit
to the Church ? These specious insinuations are refuted
wrhen one remembers that the funds of which Maurice was
trustee were, like those of all the other bishops and abbots
of that time, devoted to the erection and care of churches, to
the modest support of the parish clergy, to the relief of the
poor, to the care of the sick, to the education of youth ; and,
far more frequently than our modern historians record, to
the needs of the State. As for the revenue which might re-
main after the liquidation of these obligations, a visit to the
grand cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris will convince the
reader that the money was put to good use by Maurice de
Sully. Like the author of The Imitation of Christ, like near-
ly all the architects of the cathedrals of the Middle Age, the
original architect of Notre-Dame de Paris labored for the
glory of God, and not for the praise of men ; and therefore
he took care that his name should not be transmitted to
posterity (1). But no veil of modesty could possibly cover
the name of the episcopal projector, to whose generosity the
grand monument owes its existence. The original' cathedral
had seen six centuries of existence wdien, in 1163, the corner-
stone of the new edifice was laid by Pope Alexander III.,
who had sought refuge in France from the persecutions of
the German emperor Barbarossa, and his creature, the anti-
pope, “ Victor IV.” The year 1177 witnessed the comple-
tion of the choir of the vast edifice ; in 1182 the high altar
was consecrated by the papal legate ; and in 1196 the roof
was about to be constructed, when Maurice de Sully went to
his reward. The immediate successor of Maurice erected
the facade and the towrers, and many other bishops of Paris
labored for the non-essential but beautiful features of the
cathedral ; still, the credit of the principal part of the work

(1) Several architects labored on Notre-Dame* before, with its wealth of ornamentation.
It was completed : and of these, we only have the name of one— Jean de Chelles, who
constructed the southern transept in the thirteenth century.

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will always be given to the prelate who began his ecclesias-
tical career as a “ poor scholar ” of Sully.

When Sh Thomas a Becket sought a French refuge from
the persecutions of Henry II. — persecutions at which, alas !
some English bishops connived, — Maurice de Sully was fore-
most among the French prelates in encouraging King Louis
VII. to persevere in his truly royal refusal to banish his guest
from French soil. Just as he had refused to deliver Pope
Alexander HI. into the hands of his German enemy, so
Louis VII. assured the archbishop of Canterbury of a con-
tinuance of his hospitality. The letters which were sent
to the Pontiff on this occasion, by Maurice, and by the
bishops of Sens and Nevers, are redolent of the sentiments
which actuated their monarch when he thus replied to
Henry’s demand to repel “the late primate”: “You are
king of England, and I also am a king ; but I would not
depose the least one of the clerics of my kingdom. The
defence of exiles from persecution, especially ecclesiastics,
has ever been one of the glories of the French crown.”
When the light of seven hundred years of history had
come to his aid, Michelet, who is not regarded with
suspicion by the foes of Papal Home, found himself con-
strained to admit that the interests of the human race were
defended by the holy Becket; but without that light which
was to be furnished by the centuries which were yet to
come, Maurice de Sully was able to perceive the conse-
quences of the struggle which had been initiated by the
“ Constitutions of Clarendon.” We have three of the letters
which Maurice wrote to Pope Alexander IH., criticising
respectfully but candidly the hesitancy of the Pontiff in the
matter of adopting extreme measures against the king of
England, and against the episcopal sycophants who were
ready to ruin the cause of religion that they might bask in
the smile of royalty. In the first letter we read : “ Let the
bishop of London, and the other enemies of the Church
whom Thomas has justly though tardily anathematized, be
crushed entirely by that Rock of Peter which has so often
crushed men like them (1). If this criminal audacity goes

(1) For an account of the dastardly conduct of these prelates, see our Vol. 11., p. 293, et
seqq.

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unpunished, we may expect the speedy ruin of the Church
in England.” In his second letter Maurice says : “ Our
Most Christian King shares the sufferings of the archbishop
of Canterbury ; the entire kingdom pities him, and every-
one asks himself whether the Apostolic See can be deceived
in so evident a matter. What criminal will ever be con-
demned, if this king of England is not brought to account
for so manifest an outrage, for so patent a contempt of the
Church ? How shall innocence henceforth escape the wiles
of the calumniator, if you do not come to the aid of this
archbishop and of his companions in exile ? . . . It is our
heartfelt prayer, and that of the entire Church in France*
that Your Holiness now put an end to this great scandal ;
that you teach this king of England to conduct himself in a
Christian manner ; and that you exercise in its plenitude
the prerogative of the king of kings.” Letters like these
of Maurice de Sully determined Pope Alexander III. to send
a warning letter to the royal criminal, announcing : “We
have not thought it proper to close our eyes to your
obstinacy any longer, nor shall we again close the mouth of
the aforesaid bishop. We now allow him to do his duty
freely : to punish you with the weapons of ecclesiastical
severity for the injuries which you have heaped on him and
his diocese ” ^1). The threatened excommunication only
deferred the catastrophe. Thomas a Becket gave his life
for his flock ; and it is edifying to read that not the least of
his consolations, during his exile in the Land of the Lillies,
came from the “ poor scholar ” of Sully. f

VIII.— •• Legends ” OF THE SAIJ?T8.

During the latter part of the Middle Age, and indeed as
late as the sixteenth century, no book, after the Bible, was
so much studied as the Golden Legend , or “ Lives of the
Saints,” by James de Yoragine. In the Age of Faith no
book could appeal so strQngly to the affections, aspirations,
and even interests of men, as did one which laid bare the
foundations of that faith which was their very life, and
another which taught them how thousands of their fellows

O) Roger of Hoveden ; Annals.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

had built upon those foundations the edifice of their own
salvation. The name of James de Voragine was a house-
hold word in Christendom for many centuries ; and neverthe-
less the very name of his family is ignored, for the term
“ De Voragine ” is variously derived from the village of
Vorago, near Savona in Italy, from our author’s reputation
as a devourer of literature, and from his extraordinary
iacility in Scriptural citation, as though he ever had at hand
an inexhaustible mine of apt quotations. He informs us
that he joined the Order of Preachers at Genoa in 1244,
when he was fifteen years of age (1). According to the
conscientious and critical work of Ecliard (2), he was an
able theologian, a zealous and pathetic orator, an accurate
interpreter of Scripture, and an edifying religious. It was
James de Voraginp who, realizing that the then fully devel-
oped Italian language had finally supplanted the mother Latin
in general use among his countrymen, first translated* the
•entire Bible into the new idiom, half a century before Dante,
through his immortal poem, gave precision to that idiom (3).
Sixtus of Siena (d. 1569), regarded as the founder of the
historico-critical method of Biblical study, greatly praises
this translation for exactness — a fact worthy of note when
we remember that the Dominican Passavanti, one of the
best prose writers of the fourteenth century, found the
opposite fault, and worse ones, in every translation that had
yet appeared, whether Italian, French, Provencal, English,
German, or Hungarian (4). Spondanus says that no author
was more imbued with the principles of St. Augustine, and
that he had learned this doctor’s works almost by heart (5).
In 1267, although only twenty-three years of age, James de
Voragine was chosen provincial of his Order in Lombardy,
and as he filled this office during twenty years, his brethren
must have been persuaded of his talents, piety, and wisdom,

<D Genoese Chronicle, in Mura tori’s Italian Writer*, Vol. ix.

• (2) Writers of the Order of Preacher s, Vol. i., p. 454. Paris, 1719.

■ (3) “ That Dante created the Italian language off-handed can be asserted only by on©
■\tfho, through convenience or ignorance, repeats the sayings of others. To say nothing of
other persons, his friend Guido Cavalcanti spoke Italian like a modern. DanM directed
Italian to sublime flights ; he didtnot arrange, but determined it.” Cantu; Universal
HisUrru , b. xiii., ch. 28.

(4) Mirror of Penance. (5) At year 1292, No. 8.

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SOME SALIENT FEATURES OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 581'

for we must remember that the sons of St. Dominic-
were still glowing with their primitive fervor. In 1292
the Cathedral Chapter of Genoa elected him as their arch-
bishop. For more than fifty years Genoa had suffered,
intensely from the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines,
and one of the prelate’s first tasks was to put an end, to the
civil strife, and to efface its cruel traces from his diocese.
His four immediate predecessors had struggled in vain to
this end, and Pope Innocent IV. had personally endeavored,
during a visit to Genoa, to restore tranquillity. But nothing
discouraged James de Yoragine, and in 1295 success crowned
his efforts (1). It has been said that our author was a
Ghibelline, and that on an Ash- Wednesday, when Pope Boni-
face VIII. perceived him kneeling to receive the ashes, the-
Pontiff dashed a quantity into the prelate’s eyes, saying : “ Re-
member, man, that thou art a Ghibelline, and that with thy fel-
low-Gliibellines thou shalt return to dust ! ” But there is no-
foundation for a story so unworthy of the grand character of
Boniface and of that of the archbishop, though Sismondi
adduces a passage of Stella’s Genoese Annals , and under the
presumed authority of a greater name, Muratori, to show
that Pope Boniface committed the violence in question
toward Porchetto Spinola, the Ghibelline successor of De
Yoragine (2). But Muratori does not sanction even this
latter tale, as Sismondi would have us believe that he does.
He declares that “ it smacks of the fabulous— fabulam sapit ”
Touron, an excellent annalist of the Dominican Order (3),
well describes the life of De Voragine as devoted entirely
to study and religion ; but the Jansenist Baillet, one of the
.most bitter contemners of the Golden Legend, shows super-
fluous grief because of a fancied beatification of the arch-
bishop on the part of the Genoese and the Dominican
Order (4). “ We do not know,” replies Touron, “ whether

the people or the church of Genoa have ever given the title
of Blessed to this bishop, but we know that M. Baillet
attributes to the Dominicans pretensions which they do not
entertain.”

0) Ughelli ; Sacred Italy , Vol. iv., col. 888. Venice, 1717-22. (2) Loc. eit.

13) History of the lUmtriou s Members of the Order of St. Dominic. Paris, 1743.

(4) Discourse on the Dives of the Saints. 6 33.

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The principal work of De Voragine is undoubtedly that to
which he gave the name of “ Legenda Sanctorum — Stories of
the Saints,” but which came to be called, in time, the Legenda
Aurea — “ Golden Legend,” and also Historia Longobardica —
u History of Lombardy,” because it finished with an abridged
history of that country. There now exist more than a hun-
dred editions of the work, and in every civilized language.
Here we must remark at once that the title of the book is apt
to mislead a modern reader. When moderns use the word
“ Legend,” it is in the sense of something uncertain, perhaps
fanciful in the main, and often fabulous ; but in the days of
James de Voragine, the word signified “ something to be
read,” without any implication of doubt as to its foundation
in the world of fact. Therefore we must beware of supposing
that our author presented his Lives as mere legends ; such
a theory would be too favorable to the school which, as
Catholics, we must combat. The entire work is an explana-
tion of the Office as it is recited, day by day, during the
ecclesiastical year. Naturally, therefore, the Lives of the
Saints received prominent attention, for the feast of some
canonized servant of God occurs every day. “ The principal
object of the author,” remarks an erudite writer, ‘ ‘ is to teach
the faithful the meaning of every solemnity recognized by
the official calendar of the Catholic world. Since each
ceremony has its own significance, he explains that meaning
by means of certain traditions — sometimes very extra-
ordinary ones, and as in his time it was not so easy as it is
to-day to lay one’s hand on the life of a saint as the feast
comes around, James de Voragine conceived the idea of
gathering in one great work, in a form more diffuse than that
furnished by the Lessons of the Breviary , all the particular
Lives of the blessed ones proposed by the Church for the ven-
eration and imitation of her children ” (1). He reproduces,
as nearly as possible, the style of every author whom he cites ;
and the dialectic form of his moralizations, which so greatly
charmed his contemporaries, shows that the people of the
Middle Age were much better informed than our age generally
supposes.

(1) The AbW Rose, in the Revue de VArt Chretien , 1867, p. 89.

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SOME SALIENT FEATURES OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 583

The value of the Golden Legend was first impugned by
James Lacopius, an unfrocked friar who apostatized in 1566.
He not only rejected all that sound criticism justly blames
in the Legend , but denied the credibility of many of its
histories which are incontestably true. However, having
returned to the fold of the Church, he sealed his devotion to
the faith with his blood, being martyred by the Calvinists
at Gorcum in the Netherlands, on July 9th, 1572, together
with eighteen other ecclesiastics, secular and regular (1).
At the last moment of his terrible agonies he threw his
famous book, the Refutation of the Golden Legend , into the
flames. Launoy, the “ un-nicher of the saints,” as his extrava-
gant scepticism in all hagiographical matters caused him to
be styled (2), narrates that Despence, a celebrated doctor of
Paris in the College of Navarre, fiercely declaimed, one day
while preaching (y. 1543) against the Golden Legend as
being a tissue of lies ; but the critic adds that the doctor
afterward publicly retracted, on the demand of the Faculty
of Paris (3). This proves that as yet, in the sixteenth
century, the famous collection found champions among the
learned. Melchior Canus, a great light of the Dominican
Order, and one of the first among Catholic theologians, is
-adduced by Elias Dupin, a most erudite scholar of the
seventeenth century, as denunciatory of the Legend (4).
Dupin says that De Voragine amassed, “ without any critical
discernment, a quantity of narratives mostly fabulous. This
is the opinion of Melchior Canus on this writer : ‘ The Legend
was compiled by a man who had an iron tongue and a leaden
heart, and whose judgment was neither correct nor prudent ;
he give us monstrosities rather than miracles.’ But if this
archbishop is not to be admired for his writings, he is to be
esteemed for his piety. He was very devout, and very
charitable to the poor, to whom he gave nearly all his
revenue.” Now the great Dominican never pronounced this

(1) Echard ; loc. cit ., p. 456 .—Roman Breviary , in Supply July 9.

(2) Whenever the parish priest of St. Roch at Paris met this hypercritic, he invariably
made an extraordinary deferential sulutation, “for fear,*' he would say, “lest some day
M. Launoy may rob me of my dear St. Roch.”

(3) History of the Iloyai School of Navarre in Paris , Vol. i., p. 297.

<4) History of the Controversies of the Thirteenth Century. Paris, 1701.

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opinion on De Voragine. The words cited by Dupin are
those of Louis Vives, a famous Spanish Humanist. Canus
does not even mention the Legend or its author, in his vigor-
ous onslaught against false Lives of the Saints . The Jansen-
ist Baillet finds fault with Bollandus for trying to mollify the
extravagantly strong censure of Vives. Bollandus says :
“ I have always esteemed Louis Vives most highly. . . . but I
wonder when so grave and moderate a man styles so wise

and holy a person one of iron tongue and leaden heart

James de Voragine, like all his contemporaries, did not
possess a cultivated style, but he was learned and pious, and
was a man of singular prudence and judgment ; so much so,
that lie was more capable than Vives or Erasmus of judging
as to the probability of his narratives ” (1). Bollandus
insists against Wicellius (2), that James de Voragine con-
sulted ancient authorities of reliability : “ I cannot doubt it ;
I even find that the majority of his narratives agree with the
original documents ” (3).

Undoubtedly the Golden Legend has many grave faults.
In the first place, grievous and even absurd errors are fre-
quently committed in the etymological and other derivations
of names. Thus, for example, we read that the name of St.
Denis, “Dionysius,” is derived “ from Diana , i. e., Venus, the
goddess of beauty, and ‘ syos ,’ i. e., God, as though the bearer
were beautiful before God.” Again, the compiler is too
prone to credit every story of heavenly" visions, ecstasies, dia-
bolical possessions, etc. But it is to be noted, remarks Fleury,
that De Voragine never invented any of the stories which a
more advanced critical science has relegated to the realms of
the fabulous ; they, and similar ones, are found in Vincent of
Beauvais and other preceding writers ; our author “ merely
added some embellishments, discourses, and probable cir-
cumstances, which he deemed an edification to the reader,
and he did so with good judgment.”

(1) The text has : “ Erat non modo doctus et pirn, scd prudentia judicioqriesinouXarU
ut quam probabilta csscnt q\m scriberct , Vive Erasmoque melius potuerit judicare.”
Vo), i.. p. 20.

(2) Speaking of that critic’s History of the Saints. Metz. 1541.

(3) If the reader desires to know how far James de Voragine carried his investigations,
he may consult the Abbe Roze, loc. cit., who arranged all these authorities in chronologi-
cal order.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE CONVERSION OF THE FRANKS. THE ALLEGED CRUELTIES OF
^ CLOVIS AND OF ST. CLOTILDA.*

It has been said that when God erases, He is about to
write again. In the fifth century of our era God made use
of the barbarians to destroy the Roman Empire in the West
and on, the resulting tabula ram He traced the future annals
of a new civilization, in which the instruments of His justice
and of His loving wisdom, transformed by His Church, were
to play a prominent part. These barbarians — these “ con-
scripts of God,” as Chateaubriand happily styled them — were
the blind accomplishes of an eternal design. The new re-
ligion, recently issued from the Catacombs, had need of new
peoples, and the need was well satisfied ; for twenty years
after Odoacer the Herulan had reduced the Eternal City and
had put an end to the Western Empire, there occurred in
Gaul an event which initiated that marvellous series of events
which mediaeval writers gratefully described as the Gesta
Dei per Francos — the wondrous deeds which God performed
through the arms of the French, and which are discerned in
even more modern times by such historians as grasp the
truth that there can be no true philosophy of history for him
who ignores the directing power of the Most High in the af-
fairs of nations. There are two theories concerning the origin
of the Franks. One holds that they were a Germanic people,,
and that Tacitus mentions them when he speaks of the
Istevoni — a league of the Cherusci, Sicambri, Cauci, Catti
and Brutteri. According to this idea, the Cherusci became
weak after the days of Arminius, and were for some time
protected by the Catti ; then recovering some of their olden
strength, and acquiring a preponderance in the league, they
assumed the names of Salic or River ( Ripuarii ) Franks, ac-
cording as they dwelled near to the Saal or to the Rhine.
However, some historians contend that the Franks were dis-

* Most of this chapter appeared as an article in the American Catholic Quarterly
Review , Vol. XXI.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

tinct from the Germans, and that originally they inhabited
what are now Denmark and the duchies of Holstein and
Lauenburg. During the reign of Gallienus, the Franks
crossed the Rhine and advanced even into Spain, and at Tarra-
gona they embarked for Mauritania ; then loading themselves
with booty, they returned to their own land. In the middle of
the fourth century they became nominal subjects of Rome, and
defended the Rhenish frontier against the other barbarians.
Many poets, and some historians, speak of a Frankish king,
Pharamond, whose reign they ascribe to the neighborhood
of the year A. D. 420 ; and authentic history tells of King
Clodion, under whom the Salic Franks, about the year 440,
advanced to the Somme. Meroveus, the founder of the Mero-
vingian dynasty, was one of the victors at the battle of Chal-
ons, in 451. Childeric, son of Meroveus, ascended the
throne in 458 ; but his immoralities disgusted the nation, and
he was forced to flee to Thuringia, whereupon the Franks
chose as chief, probably not as king, the Roman Count of
Soissons, general of the Roman forces in that part of Gaul.
This nobleman, Egidius, was faithful to the Emperor Major-
ian, and therefore hostile to Ricimer,' the Warwick of that
day; consequently, he found himself deposed in favor of
Gundioc, king of the Burgundians, and he saw the Visigoth,
Theodoric II., with the connivance of Ricimer, occupy the
Narbonnaise, his line of communication with Italy. Then
Egidius invited the banished Childeric, whom the Franks
now yearned for, to return to his throne. Childeric bade
farewell to his host, the Thuringian monarch, but took with him
the queen, Basina, who had become infatuated with him.
Childeric expelled from Gaul the Alani, whom Theodoric II.
had pushed as far as the Loire ; and he consolidated his pow-
er over the Salic Franks. He dfcd in 481 ; and the Franks
lifted on their bucklers, in token of their submission to his
rule, the young Clodoveus (Chlodowig or Clovis), the issue
of the late king’s adulterous union with Basina.

At this time five different peoples occupied Gaul. In the*
centre were the Romans ; but we must remember that this
term was then applied to such of the olden Gauls as had not
imitated the Armoricans (Bretons) in proclaiming their in-

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dependence, or had not recognized the sway of some barbar-
ian monarch. Although the Western Empire had been dead
for five years, the Roman authority was still represented by
Syagrius, a son of the famous Egidius, who ruled over the
cities of Beauvais, Soissons, Amiens, Troyes, Rheims, and
their dependent territories. The Armoricans were in the
west, the Alemanni in the northeast, the Burgundians in the
east, and the Visigoths in the south. The Romans, Gallo-
Romans, and Armoricans were Catholics ; the Burgundians
And Visigoths were Arians ; while the Franks and Alemanni
were Pagans. The power exercised by Count Syagrius was
regarded as the sole legitimate authority in Gaul, having a
duration of five centuries for its sanction, whereas the
barbarian and Armorican governments relied only on the
sword. Hence it was understood that if the Gauls were ever
to resolve on a conquest of their national independence, they
certainly would fight in the name of the Roman Empire.
Therefore the destruction of that remnant of Roman domina-
tion, to which the Gauls still avowed an honorable fidelity,
would naturally be the aim of any enterprising individual
who would essay the formation of one state out of all the
discordant elements which confronted his ambition. Clovis
perceived this truth, and when the eastern emperor, bent on
a restoration of the Western Empire, appointed the Frankish
king general of the Roman armies in Gaul, the young mon-
arch felt that the time for action had arrived. In virtue of
his new title, he demanded obedience from Syagrius, and
when the proud Roman refused to abdicate his rank, 5,000
Franks advanced on Soissons. The count led his few sol-
diers to the open field ; and having been defeated, he fled to
Toulouse, the capital of Alaric II., king of the Visigoths.
Soissons opened its gates to the conqueror ; and in less than
a year he was master of all the territories which the Romans
had possessed between the Loire and the Rhine. Then,
fearing that Syagrius would incite the neighboring princes
to combine against the Franks, Clovis menaced Alaric with
war unless the Roman general were delivered to him. The
Visigoth dared not refuse, and the unfortunate was put’ to
death. Clovis now sought for a bride, and his choice of Clo-

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tilda, a Burgundian princess and a Catholic, although she
had been raised in an Arian court, gained for him the hearts'
of the Gallo-Romans. From the day of her marriage every
Catholic eye in Gaul was turned toward Clotilda as to one
who was to be the divine instrument for the conversion of the
great Clovis to the true religion and a humane policy. In
496 the Alemanni, burning to emulate the Franks, advanced
as far as Cologne and attacked Sigebert, king of the Ripuarii
whereupon Clovis, being a nephew of Sigebert, led his
Salic Franks to the rescue. The hostile forces met at Tol-
biac ; the Alemanni were routed, and Clovis annexed to his
dominions all the Alemannic conquests between the Mo-
selle and the Rhine, together with a large district on the
right of the latter river. All of these Frankish conquests
now received the name of Francia Rhenana — Rhenish France.
The remaining Alemannic territories, Vindelicia alone ex-
cepted, were accorded to a duke of Alemania, who swore to
be a vassal of the Frank monarch. Vindelicia was given to
the Ostrogothic sovereign, Theodoric, who had acted as a
mediator in effecting peace. This victory of Tolbiac was the
occasion of the conversion of Clovis. In the beginning of
the action the Franks, greatly outnumbered, were on the
point of retreating, when their king thought of the God of
Clotilda. He vowed that if he conquered the adorers of
Odin, he would become a Christian ; and on the ensuing
Christmas Day he was baptized by St. Remy in that baptis-
tery at Rheims which still remains as a monument of one of
the most important revolutions which the world has seen.
The entire Frankish nation soon followed their monarch into
the Fold of Christ ; and from that date they became the most
efficient constituent, after the Catholic Church, the informing
spirit, of the new civilization. Pope Anastasius II. grant-
ed to the Frankish kings the title of “ Most Christian,” and
styled them the “ Eldest Sons of the Church ” (1) — qualifica-
tions which were historically correct, since at that time the
eastern emperor was a Eutychian heretic, and all the west-
ern Christian princes of any importance were Arians (2).

1 1) For the antiquity of this title, see our Vol. iii., p. 369.

(2) About the year 377 the Goths asked the Emperor Valens, an Arlan, for permission to

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The consequences of the conversion of Clovis were immedi-
ate and supremely important. All the cities of Brittany sub-
mitted to the Frankish sceptre ; all the Gallo-Romans re-
garded Clovis as their liberator from the yoke, either act-
ual or threatened, of the Arian Visigoths and Burgundians ; all
the Roman legions which were still stationed between the
Seine and the Loire entered the -service of him whom the
Vicar of Christ had blessed ; and the Roman eagles and
Labanun shed some of their ancient splendor over the war-
riors of the new Christian nation. Gallo-Romans and Franks
were soon amalgamated by the force of their eommon
Christianity ; the foundations of France w*ere laid.

In his last will and testament, St. Remy thus speaks of
the family of Clovis : “ I raised it to the supreme rank of
Toyal majesty ; I baptized them all in the waters of salvation ;
I gave to them the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost, and I
consecrated their head as king with the Holy Chrism.” But
on that Christmas Hay of 496 it was not only the family of
Clovis, not only those 3,000 of his warriors who were baptized
with him, whom Christendom acclaimed as they issued from
the baptistery of Rlieims ; then all France was assigned by
the hand of God to a pre-eminent place in the destinies of
the world. “ Nearly two hundred years after Constantine,”
says Lacordaire, “ there was, as yet, no Christian nation in
the world (1). The empire was formed of twenty different
Taces, united indeed in administration, but separated by

settle in Roman territory, and the request was granted on condition that they embraced
Arianism. One of their deputies, a bishop named Ulphllas— a man of talent, who had
shown much orthodox zeal at the Council of Nice— yielded sufflcieutly to the imperial wiles
to permit his nation to obey the sovereign's behest, although he himself continued to preach
the Catholic doctrine, at least in its substantial integrity. Very soon the pest was com-
municated to all the allies of the Goths, such as the Gepidi, the Ostrogoths, the Vandals,
the Alani, etc. Genseric led his Vandals into Arianisrp in 428. Gondebald did the same
for his Burgundians in 430. The Anglo-Saxons in Britain were still idolators . — Tillemont,
Hist. Ercles ., at y. 377 ; Okillkr, art. Ulphllas.

« 1) This sentence is misleading, if one does not remember that the illustrious Dominican
ses the word " nation ” in its strict sense ; that is, applying it only to a polltically-organ-
f’p \ united, and independent people. At the time of the baptism of Clovis, there were
vi*rv many peoples in Western Europe who were entirely Catholic ; and In the East, very
far from all had succumbed to heresy. • In Europe, the Italians were not the only ones who
v *Je ted Arianism : the Gauls and the Britons (the latter then relegated to Cambria) were
Catholics. And for half a century the Scots, afterward known as the “ Irish.” .had been
Catholics, and they were then propagating the faith in Caledonia. The term *4 barbarian ”
wns then applied pre-eminently to the various hordes of Teutonic origin ; and therefore
it was said that the Franks were the first ” barbaric 11 nation to receive the faith.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

their traditions and customs ; and a new germ of division?
had been planted by Arianism, a most active and fruitful
heresy. Then the empire was beset by barbarous popu-
lations whose greed was ever increasing, and who were either
given to idolatry or subjugated by Arianism. But now be-
hold the work of God ! Not far from the banks of the Rhine,
a barbarian chieftain was engaged in battle with other bar-
barians. His followers were giving way ; and in his peril he
bethought him of the God whom his wife adored, and whose
power she had often lauded. He invokes that God ; and vic-
tory having declared for him, he prostrates himself at the
feet of the God of Clotilda. That God was Christ ; that king,
that queen, that bishop, that victory, were the French na-
tion ; and the French nation was the first Catholic nation
which God gave to His Church ” (1). If it had been given
to St. Remy to see through the veil of the future, he would
have known that a national birth was effected by the re-
generating waters which he poured on the head .of Clovis.
“Forth from the Baptistery of Rheims issued France and
all her destinies ; the age of Charlemagne, the freedom of
the communes, the genius of scholasticism, the glories of the
Crusades, the days of St. Louis, the heroism of Joan of Arc,
the valor of Henry IV., the splendor of Louis XIV., the
eloquence of Bossuet, the great modern movement, and we
ourselves. Yes, from that Baptistery we also came ; we
who are Catholics, despite the scandals of the Great Schism,
despite the seductions of the Reformation, despite the dia-
bolical reign of Voltaire, despite the bloody persecutions of
the Revolution. Despite all these terrible trials, we are
Catholics. Long and magnificent is that history which lias
been termed the Gesta Dei per Francos ; for on its every page
the grandeurof God and our national greatness stan d forth
in indissoluble unity ” (2).

Fourteen centuries have passed since the Frankish king,
Clovis, led the Burgundian princess, Clotilda, to the hy-
meneal altar, thus opening the way to an event which was

(1) Discourse on the Vocation of the French Nation , delivered In Notre Dame, Paris.
February H. 1811.

(?) Pkrreyyi ; Panegyric on St. ilotilda.

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to be one of the chief directive agents in the formation of
modern history — the baptism of France. With few strokes
of his pen Feval has described this wonderful conversion :
“ A man praying amid the ruins of the past, and a seed
developing in the dense shade of the oaks — that was suf-
ficient ; it was thus that God made France.” The man pray-
ing amid the ruins of Gallo-Roman splendor and power was
St. Remy, archbishop of Rlieims; the seed developing its
great potentialities in the silence of oppression was St. Clo-
tilda, a delicate flower which had survived the storm that
had devastated everything around her, and still retained its
native freshness and beauty. We must devote a few words
to the career of this princess, for too many historians have
sadly travestied it. Through her father, Clotilda descend-
ed from Gondicarius, who, while defending his subjects from
the invading Huns, perished at the hands of Attila. The
Burgundian dominions were then divided by his sons : Gon-
demar, Godeghesil, Gondebald, and Chilperic. The last-
named prince was the father of Clotilda. On the death of
Godeghesil, Gondebald made war on his two other brothers ;
Gondemar fell amid the flames of his last fortress ; while
Chilperic, taken on the field of battle, was conveyed to Gen-
eva, then the capital of the Burgundians, and massacred, to-
gether with his wife and all his children, excepting Clotilda
and one sister. At this time the Burgundians were Christ-
ians, but had succumbed to the Arian heresy. Gondebald,
although a ifervent Arian, allowed full liberty to his nieces to
practise the Catholic religion, in which they had been trained
by their mother. Frequently Clotilda heard the voice of
nature crying for vengeance on the murderer of her family ;
but she ever hearkened to the promptings of divine grace to
forgive him. Before many years the young princess became
the idol of Geneva, so completely did she unite angelic beau-
ty with the best gifts of a large heart and a grand soul. Clo-
tilda had not reached her twentieth year, when, in 492, her
fame was sounded in the ears of the great Clovis. He was
seized with desire to make her his queen, and accordingly
negotiated with Gondebald for her hand. The Burgundian
sovereign willingly assented ; but at first the princess hesitatr

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oil. The Franks were brave and glorious indeed, and the
world already prognosticated their early arrival at the
height of power ; but they were still pagans, and Clovis especi-
ally was attached to the worship of the false deities with all
the ardor of an impetuous and naturally religious heart.
Clotilda reflected, however, that Clovis was held in great
esteem by the bishops of Northern Gaul, and that the holy
Remy, with whom she regularly corresponded on the affairs
of her soul, had told her that he cherished great hopes that
the brave Frank would yet become a Christian. What if she
were to be the instrument of Providence in effecting so wonder-
ful and happy a transformation ? In fine, Clotilda consented
to become Queen of the Franks, and in due time set out for
the court of Clovis. Only a few days had been spent on the
journey when an event occurred which very nearly changed
the current of Clotilda’s career, and which helped to give rise
to a calumny which is gleefully repeated by philosophistic
historians. Shortly after the departure of the bridal cor-
tegef there had returned to Geneva, from an embassy to Con-
stantinople, a virulent enemy of our princess ; and on learning
of the matrimonial treaty with Clovis, he sought to prevent
its consummation. Aridius was a Roman, and the intimate
confidant of Gondebald. He had been a Catholic, but had
sacrificed his religion to political ambition, and had embraced
Arianism. There was not a more ardent sectary among the
Burgundians than this renegade, and he had often endeavored
to draw Clotilda into apostasy ; but failing, and perceiving
no favorable opportunity of injuring her, he had dissembled
his rage, and bided his time. He now tried to procure a
disavowal of the agreement with Clovis’, and an order for the
pursuit and interception of the princess. He represented to
Gondebald that he risked great danger by placing Clotilda
in the camp of the Franks. Even as a captive she had been
formidable ; he had often suggested to his lord the propriety
of ridding himself of the last of the serpent’s brood. What
would she not become, if raised to the Frankish throne ?
Even when in the power of Gondebald, she had defied him
by persisting in her Catholicism. If now she were support-
ed by the Frankish army, what would she not effect ? The

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king should remember that Clotilda was of a race that forgot
no injuries ; and that she had seen her father and brothers
murdered before her eyes, and her mother, torn from her em-
braces, thrown into a well with a stone at her neck. Aridius
prevailed ; an armed force was immediately dispatched to ar-
rest the princess. But secretly as these measures had been
taken, they came to the knowledge of a Catholic officer who
was devoted to Clotilda ; and by means of a shorter road, im-
practicable to the heavily accoutred troops, he managed to
warn her. The resolution of the princess was soon taken.
Leaving her litter, she was soon in the saddle ; and surround-
ed by a few chosen cavaliers, she pushed ahead at full speed
for the Frankish frontier, while the main body of her late
escort continued their march. No sooner had their mis-
tress disappeared over the horizon, than the Franks, for her
protection and their own, fired and otherwise devastated all
the villages and forests in their rear, as they advanced, so
that the pursuers found their progress so impeded that they
were unable to prevent the little band and its precious charge
from reaching the border in safety.

This ravaging of the Burgundian territory, presumably
by order of Clotilda, on the first occasion furnished her of
satisfying a natural desire for vengeance, has given to au-
thors of the freethinking school a specious advantage, when
they adduce in favor of their theory of our saint’s vindictive-
ness a passage of St. Gregory of Tours (545-595), in which
the holy chronicler, rightly styled the “father of French his-
tory,” seems to say that Clotilda, in her advanced age and
widowhood, armed her sons against Burgundy, in order to
further slake her thirst for revenge for the crime of Gondebald,
committed thirty or forty years previously. This testimony
of St. Gregory, say the pliilosopliistic historians, is rendered
more credible by the vengeance taken by the expectant bride ;
and then they feign to show, from the words of the archbishop
that her implacability, not military necessity and a desire to
preserve their own lives, prompted the Frankish devastation.
And in this vicious circle they pretend to find their proof
that the Catholic Church has presented to the veneration of
her children a virulent fury, or at best a person who quite

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readily succumbed to the ordinary frailties of the descend-
ants of Adam. Even Catholic authors of merit have accept-
ed the story of Clotilda’s two strokes of vengeance as authen-
tic and indubitable, contenting themselves with a more or less
successful minimization of the force of the argument deduced
from the alleged facts by the freethinkers. Thus Cesare
Cantu, as Catholic and truly philosophical a historian as
ever wielded a pen, gives the generally credited version,
unaccompanied by the slightest manifestation of doubt (1).
Henrion evinces the same innocence of suspicion concerning
the authenticity of the Gregorian text, though he extenuates
the alleged guilt of the saint by the assertion of the rights
of her sons over Burgundy. Fleury says nothing on the
subject ; but from the fact that whenever he alludes to the
Franks, he constantly cites St. Gregory as his source of
information, we may conclude that he places no reliance on
the passage in question. We may imagine how welcome to
Henri Martin, who saw in St. Clotilda a spirit of blind and
implacable vengeance, was the spectacle of one canonized
saint incriminating another. But had this historical cham-
pion of the modern anti-clerical school read the excellent
disquisition of H. del’ Epinois on the value of the writings
of St. Gregory of Tours (2), or the still more convincing
work of the Abbe de Barral (3), he would have felt less rea-
son for complacency. The alleged inculpating text of St.
Gregory of Tours runs as follows : “ Queen Clotilda, address-
ing Clodomir and her other sons, said to them : ‘ Let me
never have to regret, my dear sons, having raised you to
maturity. May my iujuries excite your indignation, and
enkindle an ardent zeal in your hearts to avenge the slaugh-
ter of my father and mother.’ Having heard these words,
they turned toward Burgundy, and marched against Sigis-
mund and liis brother Godomar.” Nowr, this delivery of her
native Burgundy to rapine and pillage, this deluging of then
peaceful homes wdtli blood, this loosening of a flood which
might engulf all Europe, is very unlike an act of that ven-

(1) Universal History , bk. vlli., ch. 9.

(2) In tbe innate of Christian Philosophy for February, 1862.

(3) Examination of the Celebrated Text of St. Gregory of Tours on the War Against.
Sigismund. Ihi , December, 1862.

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©rabl© widow of Clovis, whom St. Gregory describes else-
where as “ passing her days near the tomb of St. Martin of
Tours in all benignity and chastity.” Of course, Henri Mar-
tin accounts for this unchristian conduct by the purely
gratuitous averment that among the barbarians Christianity
existed only on the surface. Here is another vicious circle :
to evince contested facts the character of the barbarians is
adduced, and then this character is painted by the aid of
these same contested facts. But though that barbarian
blood boiled ever so fiercely, age should have somewhat
cooled it, and about forty years had elapsed since the mur-
der of Clotilda’s relatives. Again, the alleged passage of
St. Gregory confronts us with many absurdities which noth-
ing compels us to admit. If it is to be accepted in evidence,
how did Clotilda succeed so well in dominating her thirst
for vengeance during the entire life of the guilty Gondebald ?
Occasions for the satisfaction of her supposed lust for blood
had not been wanting ; and nevertheless, she had not induced
her husband to gratify it. Once, when Gondebald was shut
up in Avignon by the victorious Franks, she had but to in-
sinuate the wish, and Clovis would not have accorded peace
to the royal murderer, but would have exacted his wretched
life. On another occasion Gondebald had violated his troth
to the Franks, and had refused his tribute of vassalage to
their king. The queen certainly so far forgave as not to in-
fluence Clovis toward severity ; for he overlooked the crime
and mad© a new alliance with the culprit against Alaric.
Again, she displayed anything but a vindictive spirit in not
opposing the hearty welcome into the Frankish camp of that
Aridius who had very nearly prevented her marriage, and
had pursued her with Burgundian troops. And, finally, it
is incredible that Clotilda should have kept peace for thirty
or more years with the murderer of her family, only to take
her revenge at last on the innocent and holy Sigismund.
These and other absurdities force us to conclude that the
unique motive of the sons *in warring on Sigismund was
their own ambition.

But how are we to account for the incriminating words of
St. Gregory of Tours? We cannot charge the holy cliron-

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icier with deliberate lying ; but we must remember that he
wrote nearly a hundred years after the marriage of St. Clo-
tilda. And as Henri Martin, unconsciously refuting his own
theory, admits : “ That union and its important consequences
struck the popular imagination so vividly that they became
the text for romantic recitals, which every succeeding gen-
eration enlarged and embellished.” In this embellishment,
then, and consequent alteration of the Gregorian manuscript,
and not in the writings of the saintly chronicler, is to be
found the source of the charge that Clotilda was a vindic-
tive woman. These “ highly embellished recitals ” had im-
pressed the imagination, perhaps even affected the critical
faculties, of some copyist, monastic or secular, who was
occupied in a reproduction of the saintly author’s chronicle.
Either in good or bad faith, he wrote his ornamenting ideas
on the margin of his copy ; and in time some other copyist,
perhaps in good faith, inserted the annotations in the text
as originally the production of the recognized author of the
work in hand (1). No fact is more familiar to historical in-
vestigators than such interpolations in olden manuscripts ;
and to detect the fraud is one of the chief tasks, as it is the
most laborious, of the patient critic. In fine, we hold that
St. Gregory of Tours was not the author of the passage which
incriminates St. Clotilda. No other hypothesis can account
for the eulogy which the same historian pronounces on the
humility of the queen : “ Queen Clotilda so conducted her-
self that she was honored by all. Neither the royalty of
her sons, nor worldly ambition, nor wealth, could entice her to
perdition ; but humility raised her to grace ” (2). That the
chronicle of St. Gregory has been grievously interpolated in
many places, is satisfactorily proved by Le Cointe (3) and by
Kries (4). That the passage in question must be rejected,

(1) St. Gregory of Tours was well aware of 'the danger of alteration which all MSS. un-
derwent in his day, from indiscreet or malevolent interpolation. At the end of his work

he placed this warning : “ Although this volume is written in uncultivated style, I conjure
all the priests of the Lord who hereafter govern the Church of Tours, and I do so by the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Judgment-day, if they do not wish tosee them-
selves then covered with confusion and condemned with the devil, that they never destroy
this book ; also that they never, in copying it, add any things or omit others.”

(2) Loc. cit . (3) Evclmantical Annals of the Franks,

(4) Life and Writings of Gregory of Tours. Breslau, lb39.

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has been well demonstrated by the eminent Italian histor-
ian, Carlo Troya (1), and by Alphonse de Boissieu (2), And
now a word concerning the testimony of Fredegarius, which
is also adduced by freethinkers in corroboration of their
charge against St Clotilda. This chronicler, speaking of
the future queen’s journey to the court of Clovis, says that
before crossing the frontier and joining the king, who await-
ed her at Troyes, the princess asked hqr escort to pillage
and burn two leagues of the Burgundian territory, on both
sides of the road. They obtained permission of Clovis, and
the Franks set themselves to the task. Then Clotilda is said
to have prayed : “ Almighty God, I thank Thee ! Now I see
the beginning of my vengeance against the murderers of my
family.” Now, is it probable that Clovis, at such a time, and
merely for the satisfaction of a woman’s caprice, would have
thus created a cause of war? And how did the Frankish
escort of Clotilda, pursued by the Burgundians, find leisure
for the message to their sovereign and for the arrival of
the reply ? And remember that the expectant bride was just
then running great risk of being captured and restored to the
custody of her enemies ; for she was guarded, not by a power-
ful army, but by a mere escort of honor. These consider-
ations impel us to pass the same judgment on the testimony
of Fredegarius that we have recorded concerning that of the
Turensian chronicler. As to the prayer of thanksgiving
which Clotilda is said to have offered on the consummation
of her first vengeance for the slaughter of her relatives, we
need not let it cause us much surprise. It is not very easy
to draw the line where a just punishment of a terrible crime
ends, and the principle of Gospel forgiveness begins to have
force ; especially in the case where the sufferer is judge and
punisher. And Clotilda was then a girl of scarcely nine-
teen, who had been trained amid many of the traditions of
barbarism. Even when she knelt at the altar of God, thank-
ing Him for her escape, she was breathing the atmosphere
that surrounded her. She was a Christian; but her lately con-
verted nation had not yet forgotten the maxim of retaliation,.

“ An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” The law of her

(1) History of Italy , Vol. xl. (2) Ancient Inscriptions of Lyons.

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people assigned “ to the nearest relative of the victim, the
goods, the arms, and revenge.” Hard indeed was the task of
the Church to extirpate from the customs and laws of our
ancestors that barbarity which, born of egotism, could be
eradicated only by the spirit of self-sacrifice, cultivated by
sympathy with the woes of Calvary. In fine, we may admit
that at the time of her union with Clovis, Clotilda had not
yet arrived at that Christian perfection to which, under the
guidance of St. Remy, she was destined to attain.

Returning now to the conversion of Clovis, we would re-
mark that the spirit of the world affects to regard as insincere
nearly every conversion to the Catholic faith, although it finds
no difficulty in awarding the praise of sincerity to any per-
version from that faith. It is quite natural, therefore, that
heterodox and rationalistic historians should represent Clovis
as being influenced by ambition when he threw himself at the
ieet of St. Remy ; but one would suppose that a writer of the
ealibre of Augustin Thierry, even though he was not a
professing Christian when he penned the observation, would
not have fallen into this error (1). Thierry wrote : “ Among
the French kings of the first race, Clovis was the politician.
With the view of founding an empire, he trampled on the
•worship of the gods of the North, and he associated himself
with the orthodox bishops for the destruction of the two Arian
kingdoms. But he was the tool, rather than the director of

this league He continued to be influenced by the customs

and ideas of his people. . . . The torch and rapine did not
spare the churches when he made his incursions toward the

Saone and to the south of the Loire The ceremony (his

baptism) was performed at Rlieims, and the most splendid
arts of the Romans were adopted with profusion to celebrate
the triumph of the bishops ” (2). Gorini well remarks that if

(1) Gorlni, in his admirable Defense of the Church (1853), took occasion to ref ute a number
of Thierry's assertions made in the Conquest of England by the Normans , and in the Let-
ters on the Uistoru of Fi'ance. It is a pleasure to note that Thierry most handsomely ad-
mitted the justice of Gorinl's animadversions, and in all posterior editions (while he lived) the
criminated passages were either corrected or omitted. But the great historian had then
become a devout and uncompromising Catholic. M. Henri Martin, the head of the Druidi-
cal school, imitated Thierry's example to some extent. Guizot granted the accuracy of
Gortni’s Judgments, but he allowed the errors to appear in his later editions.

(2) In later editions, also published before his conversion, Thierry modified the last Sen-

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Clovb received baptism in order to found an empire, it
was his policy that triumphed, and not that of the bish-
ops or their faith ; especially if, as Thierry says, the Christ-
ian Clovis was no more reverent toward the churches than the
pagan Clovis had been. But how is it that the policy of Clovis
had never shown itself during his fifteen years of reign on
both banks of the Somme in the midst of Christian popula-
tions ; during his ten years of intimacy with St. Remy, and of
acquaintance with other clergymen ; and during the three
years of entreaty on the part of Clotilda that he would aban-
don paganism ? It was not until he found that the God of
the Christians had heard his prayer at Tolbiac that he aban-
doned his false deities. And if conversion to Christianity
was to strengthen his power, is it not strange that other barbar-
ian princes of the day, equally ambitious, never made such a
discovery ? But, humanly speaking, Clovis did not need to /
embrace Christianity in order to attain the objects of his royal
ambition. As a pagan he had subjugated Central Gaul ; and
all the other Gallo-Roman populations, still subject to other
barbarians, were calling on him to deliver them. And what
had he to hope, if fortune abandoned him, from the power of
the orthodox clergy? They had been unable to save the
orthodox Syagrius, put to death by him at Soissons ; or the
orthodox Childeric, murdered by the Burgundian Gondebald.
Let us, therefore, say with Nicetus, bishop of Treves, ad-
dressing Chlodosinda, a granddaughter of the Frankish king :

“ Being a man of ex’treme prudence, Clovis did not embrace
our faith until he found that it was the true one ” (1). As for
the remark of Thierry that Clovis and his Franks retained,
after their conversion, an affection for their olden habits, it
is certain that no people, newly converted, are at once met-
amorphosed; Clovis could scarcely become a St. Louis.
Among the heterodox there are some fortunate souls who
are able to appreciate to some extent the intervention of
God, the Creator and Sustainer, in the affairs of human life ;
but the arrogant Rationalist, of the earth earthy, would fain

tence so as to read : “ To celebrate the triumph of the Catholic faith.” thus presenting the
rrp'ates in a less odious f ’shion.

(DSirmond ; Ancient Councils of Gaul, Vol. 1., p. 324.

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perceive the workings of priestcraft in this intervention.
Hence we are told that the marriage of Clovis to Si Clotilda
was an affair of episcopal policy ; that the bishops, who are
said to have then held the destinies of Gaul in their hands,
projected this union as a means for the conversion of the
Franks, to whom they intended to subject the whole of Gaul,
having realized that the Arian barbarians would be less easily
converted than the idolatrous ones. But St. Gregory of
Tours (b. 539), the father of French history, upon whom we
must chiefly rely for all knowledge concerning the Franks of
this period, assigns the charms and virtue of Clotilda as the
cause of the demand of Clovis for her hand ; the historian
utters not one word which would indicate that the clergy
had any part in the affair. “ Clovis often sent ambassadors
to the Burgundians ; and these messengers, having seen the
young Clotilda, were impressed by her beauty and gracious-
ness. Having learned that she was of royal blood, they told
Cldvis about her. He immediately sent a special embassy to
demand her hand, and Gondebald, not daring to refuse, de-
livered the maiden to the messengers. When Clovis received
her, he was so enraptured that he made her his wife ” (1).

As for the assertion that the Gallo-Roman bishops had
devised the plan of subjecting all Gaul to the Franks, because
of the greater probability of the future conversion of those
idolaters, it is certain that the orthodox clergy had no reason
to despair of the conversion of the Arian Burgundians and
Visigoths. They had already attained great success ; and
very little perspicacity was needed to foresee that soon their
apostolic labors would be fully rewarded. In Burgundy the
Catholic faith had been openly professed by King Chilperic,
and Gondebald had proposed to profess it in secret. The
daughter and grandchildren of the latter prince abjured their
heresy ; and Sigismund, the king of Geneva, made St. Avitus,
bishop of Vienne, his intimate friend and adviser. As to
the Visigoths, in the previous century, before they had en-
tered into any relations with the Arians of Constantinople,
they had been Catholics ; and even in Gaul it is very probable
that Frederick, the brother of Theodoric II., was orthodox,

(1) Ecclesiastical History of the Franks , bk. ii., cb. *J8.—Epitomata^ ch. 18.

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f or we find him informing Pope Hilarius of the intrusion of
Hermes at Narbonne, and we hear the Pontiff styling him
“ my son ” (1). Certainly these and many similar facts must
have encouraged the Gallo-Roman clergy in the belief that
the conversion of the Burgundians and the Visigoths was
not improbable ; and in the face of such a belief they
would scarcely have devised the expedient of fettering
themselves and their entire nation under the domination of
those idolatrous Pranks who, if we are to credit Guizot, were
“ more German, more barbarous,” than the other barbarians.
But, by thq way, were the Franks more barbarous than the
Burgundians and Visigoths ? Guizot says : “ There were not-
able differences between these peoples. The Franks were
more foreign, more German, more barbarous than the Bur-
gundians and the Goths. Before entering Gaul, the last had
long held relations with the Romans, had lived in Italy and
in the Eastern Empire, had become familiar with Roman
manners ; and very nearly the same may be said of the Bur-
gundians. And what is more, these two peoples had been
Christians for a long time, whereas the Franks came from
Germany, as yet pagans and enemies ” (2). In the first place,
we must observe that Clovis did not bring his Franks from
Germany ; but from Tournai, in the ancient Roman province
of Belgium. When Clovis became King of the Franks, they
had resided on the Roman side of the Rhine for more than
a hundred and fifty years, having established themselves
there in 337 ; and we may well say with Michelet that dur-
ing this long residence in Celtic Belgium, they must have
necessarily become, through intermarriage, Celtic to a great
extent (3 ). But the relations between the Franks and the Ro-
mans were of a date more ancient than that of the Frankish
occupation of Belgium. From the year 288, when the Em-
peror Maximian hurled the Franks and other Germanic invad-
ers across the Rhine, great numbers of the former entered the
military service of Rome, and thus came in contact, at least,
with Roman refinement. St. Sidonius, a contemporary of

(1) Epistles of Hilary to Leontius , in Sirmond, Vol. I.

(2) History of Civilization in France , Vol. 1., lewon 8.

(3) History of France , Vol. 1., p. 185.

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•Clovis, gives pictures of luxurious display on the part of
Frankish warriors, which are incompatible with utter bar-
barism. According to Constantine Porphyrogenitus the
Emperor Constantine the Great considered the blood of the
Franks so noble that he issued a decree permitting imper-
ial princes to marry Frankish women (1). Before the time
of Clovis, the Franks had given to Borne nine commanders-in-
chief for her armies, five tribunes, a prefect of the city, a prime
minister (Arbogastes), and an empress (Eudoxia). Afh-
rnianus Marcellinus, writing in 370, tells us that for a long
time past young Franks had frequented the schools of Borne,
Bavenna, Milan, Narbonne and Autun ; that so fine were the
dwellings and so careful the cultivation on the right or Frank-
ish side of the Bhine, that a stranger had to inquire as to
which bank was the Boman (2). If the reader nowT reflects
that the Visigotliic chief, Ataulphus, said that the sole reason
w hy he abandoned his design of founding a Gothic empire
on the ruins of the Boman was, that “ long experience had
taught him the absolute impossibility of subjecting the un-
restrained barbarism of the Goths to any kind of law ” (3), he
w ill not agree with Guizot in the assertion that the Visi-
goths w ere more cultured than the Franks. There is no need
of dilating on the barbarism of the Burgundians, since all
historians agree that they wTere inferior to the Visigoths in
every respect. Gorini assigns a very probable reason for
the frequently accepted notion tliat the Visigoths w?ere more
cultured than the Franks. “As narrator of his life, the
Frank monarch had only St. Gregory of Tours, the barbarian
historian of barbarism ; whereas, at the court of the Visigoths,
there wTas, both as courtier and as suppliant, that personage
w hom M. Augustin Thierry terms ‘ the grandest poet of the
fifth century,’ St. Sidonius Apollinaris. This writer, a sensi-
ble man, and one of imagination, addicted to a highly-colored
style, was led by many circumstances to describe the habits
of Tlieodoric ; his efforts to raise to the empire the father-in-
law of Sidonius ; the solemn receptions of his successor,
Euric ; the pleasures of his Gallo-Boman subjects, who lived

(1) Chateaubriand ; Analysis of the History of France.

it) Deeds , bk. xv. (3) Orosius ; History , bk. vti., ch. 48.

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in the retirement of their villasexchanging verses with each
other, or carelessly promenading along the banks of the Gar-
onne, or preparing magnificent presents for their sovereigns. 1
The brilliant periods of the poet form a setting amid which
the Yisigothic kings lose their barbarism, and such a setting
•did not fall to the lot of Clovis. But the description of
the prayers, labors, games, and public audiences of Theo-
doric are no more interesting than would have been, if execut-
ed by an able pen, a picture of Clovis, surrounded by Clotilda,
the lords of his court, and the leaders of his army ; the artists
who had been brought from Italy ; the Gallo-Rtfmans of the
East and South begging him to enroll them among his sub-
jects ; ambassadors imploring the freedom of the prisoners of
Tolbiac ; other ambassadors handing to him the insignia of
the Consulate which they have brought from Constantinople ;
and St. Remy discoursing on the duties of a Christian ruler or
recalling the pomp and splendor of the baptism at Rheims.
There was no such painter for Clovis ; only St. Gregory of
Tours was to illustrate his career. Would Theodoric affect
our imagination more strongly than Clovis, if no one had
spoken of him but Jornandes or St. Isidore? ... That su-
perior refinement which Thierry discerns in the Visigoths
must be ascribed less to any merit of the conquerors than to
the Gallo-Roman nobles of the court, and to the descriptions
of Sidonius. As Thierry himself says, ‘the German ap-
peared in the Visigoths as soon as they took the field,’ and
they took the field very frequently ” (1).

“ Hail ! O Christ, who lovest the Franks ! Preserve their
kingdom ; enlighten their leaders with Thy grace ; protect
their army ; strengthen their faith ! May Jesus Christ, the
Sovereign Master of the masters of the earth, give to the
Franks all the joys of peace ! Hail ! O Christ, who lovest
the Franks ! By means of its courage and its strength the
Frankish race threw off the heavy yoke of the Romans ; and
having received the grace of baptism, covered with gold and
precious stones the bodies of the holy martyrs which the
pagans had burnt with fire, lacerated with the sword, and
?given as prey to wild beasts ! ”

(1) Ubi supra. Edit. 1864, Vol. 1., p. 319.

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These quaint and sublime words form the prelude to the
new Salic Law, which Clovis, immediately after his baptism,
assigned to his Franks as the basis of their future juris-
prudence. Does the reader discern in them the spirit of a
murderer — of a murderer of his own kindred ? And yet we
are told by certain historians that Clovis the Christian was
a foul assassin of his own flesh and blood. In the year 1873
the educational superintendents (“ Conseil de lTnstruction
Publique”) of the Third French Republic authorized and
“crowned ” a text-book on the history of France, written by
one Mad. de Saint-Ouen, in which we read : “ Clovis L
would occupy a distinguished place in history, if he had not
soiled his reign by his cruelties toward the chiefs of the var-
ious Frankish tribes, most of whom were related to him.
Some of them he caused to be massacred, others he killed
with his own hand.” Then the poor woman, undoubtedly
sincere, since she follows, at a distance, in the footsteps of
such pioneers as Guizot and Henry Martin, devotes twenty-
five modest pages to the presumedly easy task of trying
and condemning, for the instruction and edification of French
youth, the entire series of Merovingian monarchs : “ It is nec-
essary to give only a rapid glance at these barbarous times.”
Can it be possible that the charge of murder is deserved by
a prince whom Pope Anastasius lauded as a just man, and
as the Eldest Son of the Church ; by a prince whose most
intimate counsellor was the grand St. Kemy ? But what
evidence sustains the hideous accusation ? Merely an al-
leged passage of St. Gregory of Tours, who wrote toward
the end of the sixth century ; that is, nearly a century after
the death of Clovis. And it is to be noted that Si Gregory,
in this short passage, if indeed he was its author, used the
faord “ fertur — it is said ” no less than four times. Again, if
this passage is authentic, how are we to account for the fol-
lowing language of the saint, uttered immediately after it?
“ Every day God caused the augmentation of the kingdom
of Clovis, because lie walked before Him with a pure heart ,
and did what was pleasing in His eyes ” (1). And in the pro-

(1) “ Dew augebat regnum cjus, eo quod ambularet recto cordc coram eo, et facerct
quce placita erant in oculis cjw .”

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Iogue to his fifth book, St. Gregory offers the example of
Clovis to the sovereigns of the sixth century : “ Remember
the deeds of the first author of your victories ; of him who
put to death so many hostile kings, who crushed so many
wicked peoples, who subjugated those who now are our
countrymen (pntrias genies ), and who left to you an author-
ity which is stainless and uncontested.” In the Council
held at Orleans in 511, immediately after the alleged crimes
of Clovis, the synodals placed at the head of their Acts a
letter to Clovis in which they lauded his pious zeal and his
humanity . Were these bishops hypocrites? Finally, we
would draw attention to the characters and deeds of the pet-
ty princes who are supposed to have been the victims of the
rage and greed of Clovis. In the Life of St Maximin (Mes-
min, abbot of Mici, near Orleans), written in the early part of
the sixth century; in the Chronicle of Aimoin , written in the
tenth century ; m the Chronicle of Balderic , written in the
eleventh ; and above all, in the Life of St Bemy which
Hincmar (b. 806) reproduced from a biography composed by
a contemporary of Clovis, we find some pertinent particulars
regarding these personages, all of which indicate that the
Frank monarch was an inflexible punisher of revolt (1), like
Dagobert, if you will, or Charlemagne, or Louis XI., or
Richelieu ; but not an assassin. Much stress is laid upon the
killing of Ragnacarius, a relative of Clovis. But Balderic,
who tells us that he drew his narrative from the text of St.
Gregory of Tours, plainly evinces that he did not read, in his
copy of the alleged criminating History, the passages which
are adduced to show the wickedness of Clovis and the culpa-
ble subservience of the saint to royal power. Balderic says :
“ Clovis had assigned the custody of Cambrai to Ragnacar-
ius, his cousin or nephew. . . . When the king returned, this
Ragnacarius, inflated by criminal pride, violated his pledges,
and refused entrance into the city to his sovereign. The in-
solence and obscenities of Ragnacarius had already procured
for him the hatred of the Franks, and now they resolved to
bring about his death, and they informed the king of their

(1) And, nevertheless, yielding to the intercession of St. Euspicius, he granted full par-
don to the rebels of Verdun.

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intention.” The rebel was delivered to his sovereign, and
his execution was an act of justice. As to the murder of
Sigebert by his son Chloderic, and the killing of the latter by
order of Clovis, there is nothing in the adduced passage of
St. Gregory which would indicate that the parricide was in-
stigated by the Frank king, and certainly this sovereign was
justified in punishing so revolting a crime. Augustin Thier-
ry (1), Ozanam (2), andKries (3) assign a German legendary
source to the belief in the cruelty and injustice of the Chris-
tian Clovis ; but one of the best of the critics of our day, A.
Lecoy de la Marche, discerns its origin in the hatred wrhich
the Gallo-Roman race resumed during the reigns of the im-
mediate successors of Clovis (4). We believe that the ad-
duced testimony of St Gregory of Tours is at least an inter-
polation, and probably a malicious forgery.

The marvellous action of Christianity in the work of civil-
ization has been recognized by all conscientious historians
and polemics ; not only by those who were guided by Cath-
olic principles, but even by those who w£re the victims of
Protestant prejudice, or who allowed their intellects to be ob-
scured by the vagaries of rationalism. The Protestant Gui-
zot says : “ Among the causes of our civilization the Chris-
tian Church presents itself to every mind. Society has
never made such efforts to influence its surroundings and to
assimilate to itself the external world as the Church put forth
between the fifth and the tenth centuries. The Church at-
tacked barbarism, as it were, on every side, and, conquering
it, she civilized it.” Probably the reader has noted the fre-
quently passionate invectives of Michelet against the Church ;
but the otherwise grand historian found himself compelled to
admit: “ By the side of the civil order another order is estab-
lished, and it will take up and preserve the civil during the tem-
pest of the barbarian invasion. Everywhere, alongside the
Roman magistracy which is about to be eclipsed and to leave
society in peril, religion has established another magistracy
which will never prove deficient. Imperial universality is

(D In the Preface to his Merovingian Times.

(2) The GermaJis, Vol. i., p. 133. (8) Loe. cit.

(4) Political Murders of CUyvis , in the Revue des Questions Historiques , Vol. i., p. 450.

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on tho verge of ruin ; but Catholic universality lias appeared,,
and the world will be maintained and arranged by the
Church/’ Balmes observes : “ Amid this social dissolution,
this monstrous upheaval of laws and customs, Christianity
stands erect like a solitary column in a ruined city, like a
glowing beacon in the midst of darkness. Christianity is the
sole element which can render life to the germs of regenera-
tion which are covered by ruins and gore.” Laurentie says :
“ When civil wars had desolated the empire, and the prov-
inces were at the mercy of the barbarians, only one author-
ity in Gaul was popular, and that authority took care of the
nation, a prey to various conquerors, one after another. This
authority was that of the bishops, who were ever ready to throw
themselves between the combatants.” And the eloquent Mon-
talembert remarks : “ With invincible perseverance religion
performed the arduous work of kneading and moulding the
various elements of those Teutonic and northern races which
had overrun Europe, in order to civilize and sanctify them
through the patient and vivifying action of faith. Even Littre,
the great materialist and philologist, who persevered in his
atheism almost unto the hour of his death, avowed, in the midst
of his hallucinations, that “ in the fifth, sixth, and seventh
centuries the Church was the grand agent of social salva-
tion.” And Gibbon himself declared : “The bishops made the
kingdom of France.” This admission received the equally
celebrated commentary of Joseph de Maistre : “ The bishops
made France, as bees construct a hive.” As Cantu well ob-
served, it is only by agriculture that men become really fixed
in a country, “ and become attached to it by sentiments
which make sacred the name of fatherland,” and Guizot nev-
er spoke more solidly than when he said that the Benedictines
were les dcfrichenrs of Europe. This influence of the Church
was felt wherever there were barbarians to be tamed ; but,
above all others, and from the very day of their conversion,
the Frank barbarians seem to have been the most amenable
to the lessons of their spiritual mother, and to have been the
most zealous and enthusiastic in their demonstrations of
gratitude to God for their rescue from the darkness of pagan-
ism. Probably much of their amenability and much of the

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simplicity of tlieir Catholic spirit was due to their speedy
amalgamation with the Gallo-Romans ; for centuries were to
elapse (in the case of the Prussians more than seven) before all
the other Teutons abandoned idolatry. But their own nature
also seems to have been in their favor. We can discern a
heart yearning to love God and to fight for His honor in the
Clovis who cries out when he first hears of the Passion of
Christ : u Oh ! why was I not there with my Franks ? ” From
the day when Clovis and his three thousand companions
issued regenerated from the Baptistery of Rheims, giving an
example which was to be soon followed by their entire nation,
France seems to have been — if we may reverently so express
our idea — the special pet of heaven. In its entirety, al-
though not in all its particulars, her history warrants the
supposition, and many a time and oft her foes have pro-
claimed the idea as truth. Probably there never lived a less
enthusiastic man than that profound observer, the Austro-
Spaniard, Charles Y. ; but he declared, after many years of ex-
perience of French propensity to recover from even merited
misfortune : “ No people ever did so much to bring about
their own ruin as the French have done ; but they always
recover, for they are specially protected by God.”

Gesta Dei per Francos ! Certainly the French Catholic
has reason for holy pride as he peruses the annals of his
country, and discerns so many instances of God’s use of the
arms of France to effect His designs in the world, especially
in the sole really important matter of the preservation of
His Church. And now that a culmination seems to have
been nearly attained by the efforts of the enemies “ of all
that is called God,” which have been exerted for a full cen-
tury and more to effect the unchristianization of his country,
the French Catholic may well meditate upon these Gesta
Dei ; for in them he will find a justification of his confidence
that God has not deserted France, even in the matter of her
temporal prosperity. Of course, while individuals attain the
end of their creation only in the next world, nations must ac-
complish their end here below, and therefore it may easily
be that the end for which God established French nationality
has already been reached. It may be that all Europe is soon

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to be made a tabula rasa by a Russian or a Mongolian in-
vasion, and that once again the Catholic Church, the sole sur-
viving institution of what was once the European populus
Christianus, will pursue her God-given work of taming and
converting a new set of barbarians, who will be the most prom-
inent members of her flock during a coming decade of cen-
turies. But the remembrance of what France has done, as
an instrument of God, for Catholicism and civilization will
endure in the world when the annals of many a now proud
nation shall have become myths ; for that remembrance will
be guarded as a precious souvenir by that Church which
will endure until the end of time. Perhaps it will be chiefly
by a study of these Gesta Dei per Francos — both the original
series, which were so named a thousand and more years ago,
and the later ones, equally glorious — that the student of the
thirtieth century of the Christian era will be able to learn
something definite concerning that Arianism which is even
now almost a myth to most people, although it was, in its
day, more powerful than Protestantism has ever hoped to be.
The student will learn how a mortal blow was given to
Arianism by the victories of Clovis — against the Burgundi-
ans on the plains of Dijon, and against the Visigoths on the
plains of Vouille. In the thirtieth century the investigator
will learn how, when Arianism was in its death-throes,
Mohammed appeared, and, as Lacordaire observes, “ re-
newed the idea of Arius at the point of the scimetar ” ; how,
after its subjugation of Spain, Islamism tried to subject
France to the laws of the Koran, and the nation that was
baptized at Rheims furnished Christendom with its cham-
pion in the person of Charles Martel, whose victory at
Poitiers hurled the Mussulman hordes back into the Iberian
peninsula, and deprived them of future possibility of sub-
jugating tlie whole of Europe. Then our thirtieth century
indagator into the past will continue his searches among the
Gesta of that wonderful people of whose glories the tradi-
tions circulating in his day will be so redolent ; and he will
read how Frankish monarchs restored (not gave) to the head
of God’s Church that temporal sovereignty which the Foun-
der of the Church had designed as its guarantee of indepen-

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deuce amid the poor fluctuations of the politics of human
intelligence. The Baronio of the thirtieth century will read
how, when the Roman people, in 754, had proclaimed the
secular sovereignty of their Pope-King, Stephen II.; and the
Lombard still quasi-barbarian monarchs, Astolphus and
Desiderius, had appropriated much of what was rightly
styled the Patrimony of the Church ; the French sovereigns,
Pepin and Charlemagne, restored, by force of French valor*
the temporal power of the Pope, declaring that they re-
served to themselves and their successors ** No power within
the same limits, unless that we may gain prayers for the re-
pose of our souls, and that by you and your people we be
styled Patricians of the Romans ” (1). And when the search-
er for historical truth shall have read such annals of the
nineteenth century as may have come down to him, he will
wonder why so many of the Italians of that time were so
basely ungrateful to that pontifical monarchy which France
had assured to them, and which had procured for them an
almost uninterrupted primacy in letters, science, and art
during eleven centuries. Pursuing his studies, the thirtieth
century publicist will find in the Gcsta how, in the eleventh
century, the great heart of France recognized the voice of
God issuing from the sepulchre of the Saviour, and calling
on the children of Clovis, Martel and Charlemagne, to deliver
the Holy Places from infidel persecution ; how in that and
all the following Crusades these descendants of heroes, and
heroes themselves, shed far more of their blood in the holy
cause than all other peoples combined, and how French
monarchs ever afterward regarded that blood, and the tears
and sympathy of those who could not fight, as the most
precious jewels in their diadems. Then our investigator
will read how, in the fifteenth century, God raised up that
sweet Maid of Orleans who was canonized in the beginning
of the twentieth century ; how her valor, her purity, and her
faith triumphed over the arrogant nation which was soon to

(1) In the olden time the title of “ Roman Patrician " was given by the Pope-Kings to
very few, and only for very great services to the Holy See. Clovis had received the honor,
and Pepin was anxious to bear n title which then signified “ Defender of the Church,” and
would therefore increase his consequence in the eves of all Christian nations. He received
it from Pope Stephen on the day that the Pontiff crowned him as King of the Franks.

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become heretical, and by that triumph preserved the Land
of the Lilies from the imminent pestilence. Then the stu-
dent will perceive, a little further on in the Gesta, how gallant-
ly the French prevented their own land from succumbing to
the dire conflagration which had seared the regions watered
by the Thames and the Elbe. “ Luther came into the world,”
says Lacordaire, “ and at his call Germany and England
separated themselves from the Church. Had France accept-
ed their fearful invitation, what would have been the result
for Christianity ? Her national enthusiasm saved France.
Confederated in a holy league, Frenchmen placed their faith
above everything else — even above their allegiance to their
monarch — and they refused to recognize as legitimate heir
to the crown any prince who would not swear fidelity to the
God of Clovis, of Charlemagne, and of St. Louis. For the
defence of the Church we Frenchmen have fought combats
of blood and of mind. Arianism crushed, Islamism van-
quished, the temporal dominion of the Popes consolidated,
Protestantism repelled, — behold the four crowns of France
which will not fade for all eternity.” These four crowns rep-
resent, indeed, the chief episodes amoug the Gesta Dei per
Francos ; but they are not the sole instances of God’s use of
J;he arm of France for the good of His mystic spouse, or of His
loving protection of France. Much could be said about God’s
work in saving France from the philosophists and.s ans-culottes
of the last century, and much about France’s defence of the*
Holy See almost to the present day. Are there to be any
more chronicles of Gesta Dei per Francos? An affirmative
reply will be given by those who perceive pre-eminent
vitality in the Catholicism of the great majority of French-
men : by those who contend that the French Church of our
day has an inestimable advantage over that of the eighteenth
century, inasmuch as now the warfare between good and evil
in France is open, a contest between affirmation and nega-
tion, and not a question between religion and religiosity — be-
cause, in fine, the day of half-measures has passed, and now
a Frenchman must be either a Christian or an atheist. Such
students of their epoch find that the religious movement en-
couraged by Lacordaire, Montalembert, and Dupanloup, has.

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boon much advanced, of late, among the enlightened classes ;
and while they are invincibly opposed to the sect which nowr
administers the affairs of the Republic, they see no reason
why Catholics, as such, should regard the Republic itself
with suspicion. “ The Church follows all the natural move-
ments of reason and of history, with the intelligent tender-
ness of a mother for her child; she is ever ready to satisfy
the legitimate desires of her child. To the man of ancient
times, crushed under the despotism of the Roman Empire,
the Church offered refuge in one of her solitudes, where he
could renounce the corrupting goods of earth. In the Middle
Age, when man had acknowledged her maternal authority,
the Church showed him that he could live according to the
law of God, even in the world. At the time of the Renais-
sance, the Church associated herself with the literary and
artistic movement of civilization ; and she furnished the
world with inspirations and subjects which helped to im-
mortalize so many men and works of the sixteenth century.
To-day, democracy, the equality of all men in civil and
social rights and duties, is a general aspiration of civilized
people ; and it does not entail upon the Church any necessity
of changing her doctrines, since she was the first to inculcate,
under the superior law of charity — the love of God and of
men — the principle of equality among men” (1). We hope,
therefore, that Mgr. Freppel, one of the noblest Frenchmen
who ever donned the mitre, was justified in pronouncing
these encouraging words : “ Lift up thy head, noble land !
Have confidence in thy divine vocation ! Thou hast not yet
fulfilled thy divine mission ; for shouldst thou disappear,
thou wouldst leave a void which Divine Omnipotence alone
could fill. If some days of forgetfulness have called down
punishment upon thee, many centuries of devotion to Christ
and His Church demand pardon for thee. Thou wilt resume
thy glorious destiny ; remaining in the world the soldier of
Providence, the armed apostle of faith and of Christian civili-
zation. Just as in the past, the weak and the oppressed of
the universe will owe their deliverance to thy valor. Thou
wilt repeat those grand days of thy history, when all that

<1; Pellissier ; Christian France in the Nineteenth Century. Paris, 1895.

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was most venerable on earth was protected b y the sword of
Clovis, of Charlemagne, of Godefroy de Bouillon, of St.
Louis, of Joan of Arc ” (1).

As we write this dissertation, Christian France is celebrat-
ing the fourteenth centennial of that sacred function which
was performed by St. Remy in the baptistery of Rheims on
the Christmas Day of A. D. 496. From all parts of Chris-
tendom the great heart of the real and Catholic France has
received proof that its emotions are shared by all the chil-
dren of that Church whom it has served so well. The follow-
ing ode, written by our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIII., on this
joyful occasion, deserves remembrance by future generations :

VI VAT CHR1STVS QUI DILIGIT FRANCOS.

OB MEMORIAM AVSPICATISSIMI EVENTYS QVVM FRANCORVM RATIO
PRJEEYKTI CLODOYIO RXGK SX CHRISTO ADDIXIT.

Gentium custos Deus eat. Repente
Sternit insignes humilesque promlt :
Exltus re rum tenet atque nutu
Temperat aequo.

Teutonum pressus Clodoveus armls,
Ut suos vldit trepidos perlcll,

Fertur has voces lterasse, ad astra
Lumina tendons :

Dive, quern supplex mea saepoconlux
Nuncupat Iesum, mihi dexter adsis :
SI juves promptus validusque, totum
Me tlbl dedam.

Illico excussus pavor : acriores
Excitat virtus animos ; resurgit
Francos In pugnam; ruit, et cruentos
Dislicit hostes.

Victor i, voti Clodovee compos.

Sub lugo Chrlsti caput obllgatum
Pone ; te Rem is manet infulata
Fronts sacerdos.

Te colet matrem ; tua malor esse
Gestiet natu : pottore vita
Cresset, ac summo beneflda Petro
Clara feretur.

Ut mihl longum libet lntueri
Agmen heroum I Domitor ferocls
Fulget A8tol0, plus llle sacrl
Iuris amator.

Remque Romanam populantis ultor:
Bis per abruptas metuendus Alpes
Irruit, summoque Petro Yolentes
Asserit urbes.

Laetus admiror Solymis potitas
V indices Sancti Tumuli phalanges
Me Palaestinis renovata campls
Pruelia tanguqt.

O novum robur Celebris puellaa
Castra perrumpens ini mica ! turpem
Galliffi cladem repulit Ioanna
Numlne freta.

Ludor ? en slgnls posit is ad aram
Ipse rex sacris renovatur undls,
Et cohora omnls populusque dlo
Tlngitur amne.

O quot illustres animse nefanda
Monstra Calvin! domuere, gentem
Labe tarn dira prohlbere fortes.
Sceptraque regni !

Roma ter felix, caput o renatae
Stlrpis human®, tua panda regna:
Namque victrices tibi sponte lauros
Fra nci a defert.

Quo feror ? terapus redit auspicatum
Prisca quo virtus animis calescat.
Ecce, Remensis ciet atque adurget
Corda trlumphus.

(1) Discourse for the Benefit of Wounded Soldiers. Feb., 1889.

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Gallic® gentes, iubaris vetustl
N« quid obscuret radios, cavete ;

Ners suflundat malosuados error
Mentibus umbras.

Vos regat Ghilstus, slbi quos revlnxtt :
Obsequl seeds pudeat probrosis ;
Oooldat llvor, soclasque In uuum
Ooglte Tires.

SsBcla bis septem calor actnosa
Fnsddt YlUB, renuens pertre :
Gurrlte ad Veelam : norus eestuabft
Pectore fervor.

Dlssids floret magis usque terris
Gallleum nomen : popull vel ipsis
Adslt eoii, Ftdelque saneta
Vo(a secuudet

Nil Fide Obristl prlus : bac adempta
Nil dlu feliz. Stetlt unde prlsca
Summa laus genti. manet lode lugis
Gloria Gallos.

CHAPTER VII.

THE REIGN AND CHARACTER OF 8T. LOUIS IX.*

The reign of the holy grandson of Philip Augustus has
been rightly styled the keystone of the arch of French his-
tory. Certainly much had been effected for the consolida-
tion of the French monarchy when Philip Augustus defeated,
at Bouvines (July 27, 1214), the trebly larger forces of the
German Ofcho IV. and the English John Lackland. By that
victory the standard of the Lilies, which for some years had
waved only over the space which is covered by five of the
modern departments of France (1), again threw its protect-
ing folds over all the ancient provinces excepting Aquitaine.
But it was in the reign of St. Louis that the lineaments of
the later French society were drawn ; and it was in the per-
son of that everlasting glory of the French monarchy that
the world beheld an incarnation of all that was most honora-
ble, most redolent of justice — in fine, most Christian, in the
royalty of the Middle Age. This reign demonstrated that
the great theologians of the Church had not formulated the
vagaries of a dream when they conceived the idea of a Christ-
ian royalty legitimatized, not only by sacerdotal consecra-
tion, but by justice in its exercise, and by a proper participa-
tion, on the part of the governed, in public affairs. The sali-
ent features of the career of St. Louis, the grandest of the
nearly innumerable Christian heroes of France, are at the

* This chapter appeared ns an article in the Amer. Cath. Quarterly Review , Vol. xxii.

(1) Seine, Seine et Loire, Seine et Marne, Oise, and Loiret ; 120 by 90 miles in extent.

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command of the student (1) ; in these few pages we propose
to treat of some points which, although essential to a proper
appreciation of the character of the royal confessor, and to
even a moderate understanding of the period in which he
lived, are ignored by the authors whose works are consulted
by the average reader. We shall touch upon the sanctity
of Louis IX. only by implication ; for nothing in the domain
of history is more certain than the belief in that sanctity,
held by the contemporaries of the monarch, whether French-
men or foreigners, Christians or pagans. Neither shall we
attempt to detail even the principal events of this charming
and edifying life ; but we may be permitted to preface the
fulfilment of our main purpose by a brief summary of the
results of a policy which, although less theatrically impres-
sive than that followed by certain of the crowned disposers
of national destines, was probably unique in an utter absence
of reasons for blame. From the very beginning of his reign,
Louis IX. resolved to restrain the abusive domination of the
great vassals of the crown ; but law and justice formed the
invariable basis of his conduct. The same scrupulousness
led him to doubt as to the entire legitimacy of certain con-
quests of some of his predecessors to the detriment of the
kings of England, and he resolved to yield something for the
sake of peace. By the treaty of Abbeville, in 1259, he
voluntarily ceded to Henry III. of England part of the terri-
tories which that monarch reclaimed from the conquests of
Philip Augustus ; but in return he obtained the recognition
of Anjou, Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Berri, and Poitou, as
inalienable from the French monarchy. The English sover-
eign also engaged to do homage to the king of France, as to
his liege and suzerain lord, for all his possessions in the
kingdom of France. When the dissensions between Henry
III. and his barons threatened to become interminable, the
reputation of Louis for probity caused the contestants to
appeal to him as arbitrator. In 1264 both parties argued

(1) Michelet; History of France , ch.8. Paris, 1830.— Villkneuye ; History of St.
Louis. Paris, 1840.— Mignet ; Feudality and the Institutions of St. Louis. Paris, 1850.
—Cantu ; .St. Louis of France , In the Collection of Biographies attached to that author’s
Universal History , 9th Turin edition, 1862.— Lecoy de la Marche ; St. Louis, His
Government , and His Policy. Paris, 1891.

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their claims before the saint at Amiens, submitting to his
judgment, although only for a time. In his conduct toward
Frederick II., the most virulent of all those German em-
perors who were, with few exceptions, so many running sores
in the visible body of the Church, the saintly monarch
demonstrated that if the Holy Roman Emperors of the Ger-
man line had ignored the fact that their sole reason for exist-
ence was their obligation to be Defenders of the Holy See,
that sublime privilege had devolved on the Eldest Sons of
the Church. In his relations with the Orient, the crowned
hero showed himself a missionary, as well as an armed de-
fender of the Christian faith ; he spared no exertion, no ex-
pense, in aiding the missions which the sons of Sts. Dom-
inic and Francis had established among the Photian and Nes-
toriun schismatics, and among the Saracens and Tartars.
In the administration of the internal affairs of his kingdom,.
St. Louis was an energetic and prudent reformer ; there was
not, in all France, a bailiff, a seneschal, or a provost who
was not made to feel that his office was a solemn charge for
the benefit of the people. The reign of St. Louis was pre-
eminently one of justice. The royal tribunals became sure
refuges for oppressed innocence ; and the king himself heard
whatever case a subject desired to be considered by him.
From one end of the kingdom to the other, the proudest lord
hastened to undo a wrong, when he heard the peasant mur-
mur : “ If the king only knew of that ! ” Students of public
economics know that anything like a well-regulated sys-
tem of governmental finance is of very modern origin ; but St.
Louis so regulated the reception of revenue, so accurately
verified all the accountings, that never, during his reign, was
there ordered an extraordinary tax. And let the statesmen
of our day note that to our times must not be credited the in-
vention of that famous panacea : “ No taxation without rep-
resentation.” In 1256 this “ cowled king ” decreed in favor
of the bonnes villes of his dominions that no tax should be
levied on them without their consent. If the reader is curious
to know how much St. Louis effected for the amelioration of
the lot of the serfs, and how he emancipated those of his
own royal domain ; if it would interest the social economist

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THE REIGN OF ST. LOUIS IX. 61 T

to learn all that this crowned saint of the Middle Age effect-
ed for the encouragement of art, for the improvement of
agriculture, etc., we refer him to the eloquent but judicial
narrative of Lecoy de la Marche. When the beautiful pict-
ure has been examined, it may occur to the observer that it
is strange that one is not oppressed by the sight of some
disagreeable shadows, behind which some possible miseries
may lurk. Nearly every other biography furnishes some
occasion for adverse criticism of its subject ; but that of St.
Louis refuses to a critic the exercise of his choicest prerog-
ative, and for the simple reason that Louis IX. was more
than a worthy husband and father, a consummate statesman,
a successful general, and an excellent sovereign. He was
also a saint. Such a phenomenal combination has been
witnessed in only three or four instances in the history of the
world ; for while it is true that, at least in the Middle Age,
there were many royal saints — considering the comparative
fewness of royal personages, more than from any other con-
dition of life — very seldom have other saintly royalties filled
all the positions which St. Louis occupied (1).

It is impossible to attain to a correct conception of the
character and influence of St. Louis, or to any accurate knowl-
edge of the period in which he lived, if one does not appre-
ciate properly the theory concerning the nature and origin
of the royal power which was then in vogue. And among
moderns, especially among those whose ideas of history
have been derived from Protestant and rationalistic sources,
how many are there who understand the meaning of that phrase,
the “ divine right of kings,” which, with some show of reason,
they regard as indicative of that toto ccelo difference which

(1) Speaking of the Venerable Mary Christina of Savoy, mother of King Francis II. of the
Two Sicilies, a writer In the CiviUd Cattolica (1860) says : “ In the Ages of Faith sanctity
shone on tbe thrones of kings, and in royal halls ; and perhaps more than in the homes of
the lowly and in the cells of religious. Then Italy, France, Spain, Germany, England,
Scotland, Hungary, and Denmark gave to the Church so many saints who were either
kings or queens, or royal princes or princesses, that, considering the comparatively small
number of those persons who occupy so elevated a position, it may be seen that reigning
families furnished more saints than were produced by any other condition of life.”

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subsists between mediaeval days and our own ? Very few ;
and, nevertheless, there are some who have read, to say
nothing about many minor struggles between royal autocracy
and the protectress of the peoples, much concerning that per-
ennial and soul-sickening struggle between the Papacy and
the Holy Roman Emperors of the German line — a contest the
sole object of which was, on the part of the Pontiffs, to force
the emperors to avow that between them and God there was
a divinely-appointed power. If these pages come to the no-
tice of any persons who believe, with the immense majority
of Protestants, that the “ divine right of kings,” as they un-
derstand the formula, was the theory held by jurists in the
Middle Age, and then taught by the Church, they must learn
that the Church has never made any definition concerning
either a mediate or an immediate communication of ruling
power. The Church has simply presented the dogma re-
vealed in the Pauline declaration that all power comes from
God. But the most reliable and most authoritative doctors
and theologians of the Church have taught that power has its
source in the nation ; that power comes from the nation ; and
that the nation gives, in some manner and in unison with God>
that power to princes or other rulers of the peoples. Hear
St. Chrysostom, as he comments on the Pauline text : “Is every
ruler established by God? I do not say that he is ; for 1 am
not speaking of any particular rulers, but of the thing in it-
self. I say that it is an institution of Divine Wisdom that
some command, and others obey ; and thus human affairs do
not go on in haphazard fashion, the peoples being agitated
like the waves of the sea. The Apostle does not say that
there is no prince who does not come from God ; but speak-
ing of the thing itself, he says that there is no power, unless
from God” (1). But hearken to the Angel of the Schools,
who, to put the matter very mildly, is the best accredited of
all the Catholic theologians, and upon whose judgments all
other theologians rely, when they approach this matter ex
professo. St. Thomas, who was a contemporary of St. Louis,
tells us that the legislative power resides in the nation, in
the people, or in him who has received it from the peo-

(1) Homily XXIII. on the Epistle to the Romans .

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pie (1). He says the same in regard to the coercive pow-
er (2). He insists that in certain conditions of society, the
ruler has power to make laws, only because he represents
the nation — in quantum gerit personam multitudinis (3). A
little further on he says that in a well-ordered state the gov-
erning power belongs to all — principatus ad omnes pertinet ,
inasmuch as all can vote and be elected (4). After Sto Thomas
of Aquino, probably Suarez would dispute with Bellarmine
the honor of leading the schools. The opinion of Suarez con-
cerning the divine right of kings can be gathered from his
“ Treatise on Laws,” and from an apposite work written in
reply to King James I. of England, who, an earnest champion
of that doctrine which is falsely supposed to be Catholic
teaching, had taken up the pen in an attempted refutation of
Bellarmine’s defense of the really Catholic position. Listen
to Suarez : “It must be admitted that the power to rule is
not given by nature to any one person in particular ; being, rath-
er, resident in the community. This is the common opinion,
and it is certain . It is the teaching of St. Thomas ” (5). And
can anything be clearer than the following? “ Whenever the
civil power resides in any man, in any prince, it has emanat-
ed, by legitimate and ordinary right, from the people and
the community, either immediately or mediately ; and in no
other way can it be legitimate ” (6). Again : “ When the
civil power is found in this man, it is the result of a gift of
the nation, as I have proved ; and in that respect, the power
is of human right. And if the government of this or that
nation or province is monarchical, it is such because of hu-
man institution, and therefore the power also is of human ori-
gin. And what proves the matter more strongly, the power of
the ruler is more or less great, according to the agreement
between him and the nation ” (7). Now listen to the reply
of Suarez to His Protestant Majesty : “ Here the most serene
king not only upholds a new and singular opinion (that of
the immediate and direct divine right of kings), but he violent-
ly attacks Cardinal Bellarmine because His Eminence affirmed

(1) Summa Theol ., 1 a.. 2 ae., q. 90, a. 3. (2) Ibid .. q. 90, a. 3, ad 2 um.

(3) Ibid ., q. 97, ad 3. ad 3 urn. (4) Ibid., q. 105, a. 1.

(5) Laws , lib. ill., cap. 2. (6) Ibid., lib. iii., cap. 3. (7) Ibid., cap. 4.

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that monarchs, unlike the Sovereign Pontiffs, do not receiver
their authority immediately from God. His Majesty holds
that a prince does not receive his power from the people*
but immediately from God ; and he tries to support his as-
sertion with arguments and facts which I shall examine in
the following chapter. Now, although this controversy does
not turn directly on matters of faith, since neither Scripture
nor patristic tradition determines anything concerning the
subject, nevertheless the matter ought to be treated care-
fully, firstly, because it may furnish an occasion of error in
others ; secondly, because the king’s opinion, such as he es-
tablishes it, and because of its object, is new and singular,
and seems to have been expressly invented in order to en-
hance the temporal, and to diminish the spiritual power ; and,
thirdly, because we contend that the opinion of the illustri-
ous cardinal is ancient, received, true, and necessarily to be
admitted ” (1). When such was the opinion of theolo-
gians like the Angelic Doctor, Bellarmine, and Suarez, we are
not surprised on hearing Beaumanoir, in the thirteenth cen-
tury, and Marsilio of Padua, in the early fourteenth, assert-
ing that the people were the first sovereign, and that from
the people the king derived his right to make laws.

Nevertheless, the sovereigns of the Middle Age, especially
in France, were popularly regarded as, in some sort, images of
the Deity ; in those days men respected authority. In
France, the holy unction which the monarch received at
Bheims gave to him, in the popular imagination, an almost
sacerdotal character ; hence in the Chanson de Roland we see
Charlemagne giving a solemn, blessing to his army. It is
very probable, remarks a judicious critic of our day (2), that
this idea of the quasi-divinity of royalty came from the prin-
ciple of Aristotle — a philosopher then almost worshipped in
the schools — that the monarchical form of government is the
most comformable to the order of nature, since all nature is
ruled by one God. So thought Gerson, repeating the words
of Homer, “ 0u% dyadov xoAuxotpavta el? %oipavn$ 2<ttuj — It is not
good to have many leaders ; let us have but one.” As to

(1) Defense of the Faith Against the Errors of the Anglican Sect -

(ft) Jocrdain ; The French Royalty and Popular Right ,

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THE REIGN OF ET. LOUIS IX.

621

hereditary monarchy, the principle was by no means absolute
in mediaeval France. Louis VIII. was the first monarch
whose father had not procured his coronation during his own
life ; all the Capetians, down to Philip Augustus, had found
it necessary to take this measure in order to secure the suc-
cession to their eldest sons. At that time, not only in France,
but also in Italy, Hungary, and Germany, there was always
a menace in the ears of a reigning prince ; he knew that mis-
conduct or tyranny might cause the royal dignity to be trans-
ferred to some other family. However, with the advent of
St. Louis, the hereditary principle was definitely accepted by
the French ; the Christian prestige of this prince was so
communicated to his race that to be the heir of St. Louis
was equivalent to being the future wearer of his crown. And
now a word as to the measure of the royal authority during
the Middle Age. Elinand, a Cistercian monk of the diocese
of Beauvais, in the time of St. Louis, whose knowledge and
prudence is lauded by all his literary contemporaries, and
whose political ideas are regarded as having helped to form
the policy of the holy monarch, thus speaks of the power of
a Christian sovereign in his day : “ The ancient code (the
pagan Roman) utters a tremendous lie, when it pronounces
that the mere will of the prince has the force of law. ... It is
not at all strange that, among us, the king is not allowed to
have a private treasury ; for the king does not belong to him-
self, but to his subjects ” (1). And lest the reader may
think that this theory of Elinand is a mere isolated opinion,
we subjoin a remark of the most celebrated publicist of that
day, Cardinal James de Vitry, bishop of Tusculum and dean
of the Sacred College : “ There is no security for a monarch,
from the very moment when men find that they are not secure
from him ” (2). Then we hear St. Thomas proclaiming that
the good of the community is the sole end of a government ;
that a monarch is not enthroned for his own satisfaction, but
Tor the public weal ; that a king must be the good shepherd
of his people ; that, in fine, no law should be considered as

<1) In a sermon by Elinand, recorded in the edition of the works of Vincent of Beauvais,
published by the Dominicans of Doual, in 1624. v

(2) Latin MS. No. 17,509, folio 103, in the National Library of France, cited by Lecoy dc
la Marche, loc. cit.

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such, unless it be “ a reasonable regulation, promulgated by
him who has the care of the community, and directed to the
public good — qucedam ratiohis ordinatio ad bomun commun* ,
ab to qai curam communitatis habet prornidgata ” (1). One of
the most ardent partisans of hereditary monarchy was the
great Gerson ; but he wrote : “ He errs who thinks that a king
can use the persons and goods of his subjects as his pleasure
dictates ; or that he can load his people with taxes, when the
public weal does not call for such burdens. Such conduct
is that of a tyrant, not that of a king ” (2). It is true that in
the time of Philip the Fair, the hero of the sad and disgrace-
ful episode of Anagni, certain jurists tried to flatter their
royal master with the notion that his authority was unbound-
ed ; that it was even independent of the tiara (3). But we
must remember that between the reigns of St. Louis and
Philip the Fair there had intervened the reign of Philip III.
(the Bash) ; that then had really begun the end of the Middle
Age, and the disintegration of its vital and most character-
istic elements. During the reign of St. Louis, and during
many previous centuries, no Christian publicist would have
dared to utter such sentiments as began to be current when
the populus Christianas was giving place to the divided
Christian peoples, and when other elements than the Christian
faith began to sway the nations. In the palmy days of the
Middle Age the governmental ideal was an absence of both
despotism and demagogy.

St. Louis was not twelve years of age when, by the pre-
mature death of his father, Louis VIII., he was called to the
throne of France in 1226. The political condition of France
was very different from that which the kingdom had present-
ed in the time of Charlemagne. That king of the Franks,
placed by Pope St. Leo III. at the head of a new empire
which had nothing but the name in common with that of
pagan Borne, had fulfilled his mission by combining the
heterogeneous elements entrusted to his care, so that he
left behind him neither Bomans nor Franks, neither Gauls
nor barbarians ; but a populus Christianas , in a unity which

(1) Jourpa in : Philosophy of St. Thoma# , 1., 407. (2) Jourdain ; Ibid.

(3) Gold ast; Monarchy of the Holy Roman Empire , ii., 96.

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THE REIGN OF ST. LOUIS IX.

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required for its maintenance merely the moral leadership of
the Roman Pontiff, and in that unity the political and social
organization of the Middle Age was established (1). In the
year 962 Pope John XII. transferred the Holy Roman Empire
from the French to the Germans ; but thereafter the emper-
ors were merely kings of the Germans and of whatever other
peoples happened to be subject to the titular of the nonce,
he enjoying over other sovereigns only the primacy of dig-
nity. When the crown of France passed from the Carolin-
gians to the Capetians, a radical change had been effected
in the royal condition. Under both the Merovingians and
the early Carolingians, the dukes and counts, in various-
parts of the kingdom, had been merely administrators fbr
the king ; but toward the end of the ninth century they
bought up or appropriated the proprietorship of their terri-
tories. Thus arose feudalism in France, the new proprie-
tors soon confounding, in good or in bad faith, the right of
the land-owner with that of sovereignty. In this new state
of affairs, in which the sovereignty was attached to the land
instead of to the individual, the king was a person of small
consideration ; for even his residence, the lie de France, be-
longed to the Count of Paris. Even when the will of the
nation raised Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Duke of
France, to the royal throne in 986, his own services and those
of his father, Hugh the Great, could not obtain for him bet-
ter conditions than that he should be full sovereign in his own
county of Paris, and have the commandment of all forces
in war. Of course all the other princes swore homage to the
new’ king as their “ suzerain.” From the date of Hugh Cap-
et’s accession down to the time of Louis XI., the main object
of every king was to enlarge his owrn peculiar domain by
purchase or alliance, and to augment the attributes of his
suzerainty. The first successors of Hugh Capet, namely,
Robert, Henry L, and Philip L, effected much in this really
praiseworthy struggle ; that great minister, the Benedictine
abbot Suger, did still more in favor of Louis VI. and Louis
VTI. ; but Philip Augustus struck two mortal blows against
feudalism. The first was when he caused the king of Eng-

(1) Lecoy de i.a Marche; loc. cit., p. 27

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land, liis most redoubtable vassal, to answer, before the
peers of France, for the crime of murdering his own nephew ;
confiscating thereafter to the benefit of the French crown,
nearly all the fiefs which the English monarch had held in
France, namely, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and
Poitou. The second blow was when, by the victory of Bou-
vines, he destroyed forever the arrogant pretensions of the
German emperors in regard to France. It is true that Philip
Augustus feared for the permanency of his work ; but God
had decreed that his daughter-in-law, the saintly Blanche of
-Castile, should carry it on during her regency, and should so
train her son, St. Louis, that he would perfect it by the ex-
ercise of an ability and an honesty which exceeded those of
his grandfather. In the fulfilment of his task, St. Louis re-
lied little on the lasting effects of conquest ; nay, he was so
unworldly that he would not regard as legitimate any gain
accruing to his kingdom, which had not been sealed by a
perfect concord between the parties concerned. The work
of consolidating the Capetian monarchy on the ruins of
feudalism was indeed consummated only by Louis XL, the
very antipode of St. Louis ; but the latter monarch had con-
tributed more to that end than all of his predecessors united.
And how different was the policy of St. Louis from that of
his foxy successor ! Certainly Louis XI. was not the charac-
ter which most modern historians describe for the worship-
pers of the nineteenth century ; nor was he at all the incarna-
tion of royal cruelty and deceit whom modem play-goers
know so well. But where Louis XI. was astute, St.
Louis was frank ; where Louis XI. was unjust, St. Louis ob-
served an equity which would have excited the derisive
laughter of a Cavour or a Palmerston, if the Middle Age
could have tolerated those who are grandmasters of “ di-
plomacy ” in our day. Finally, the policy of St Louis was
less expensive than that of Louis XI. ; and since it was in-
comparably less expensive than the policies now in vogue,
our utilitarians should accord to it their heartfelt admiration.

II.

In the palmy days of Gallicanism, and of its sister-school.

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625

German courtier-theologism, one often heard the name of
St. Louis cited as that of an opponent of the “ encroach-
ments of Rome.” Even in our own time, when both of
these schools were dead, and waiting for the Vatican Coun-
cil to bury them, theists of celebrity et id omne genus were
wont to utter the same absurdity with complacent solemnity.
Poor Renan said : “ The Church had commanded kings to
obey ; Philip Augustus and St Louis protested , and Philip
the Fair dared to resist ” (1). That Philip Augustus pro-
tested against the order, issued by Pope Innocent III., to
put away his concubine, and to restore Queen Ingelburga to
her rights, is true ; but he repented in time, and obeyed.
That Philip the Fair resisted the just demands of Pope
Boniface VIII. is also true ; but he was obliged to acquiesce
in the vindication of that Pontiff* s conduct by the Fifteenth
General Council. That St. Louis protested, in the sense in
which Renan, Michelet, etc., use the term, is false. The
principal, if not the sole, reason for supposing that St. Louis
would have been a Gallican, if there had been such a thing
in his day, is founded on an unauthentic document — that
celebrated forgery which bears the pseudo-title of “ Prag-
matic Sanction ” (2). Elsewhere we have done justice to
this pretended edict of St. Louis (3), and here we need only
say that no true erudite of our day defends its authenticity.
But there are some, for instance, Viollet and Wallon, who
insist that even though St. Louis did not issue the supposed
Sanction, he might have done so in all consistency ; for,
they contend, his principles were those defended in it. This
curious theory was that of Bossuet, who did not fully credit
the document. The great bishop of Meaux exclaimed to
those who, even among his partisans, decried the authenticity
of the Sanction : “ Even though this Pragmatic were apoc-
ryphal, its doctrine ought not to be^rejected ” (4). Let us
see, therefore, what was the attitude of the grandest Chris-
tian of the thirteenth century toward the Holy See. This

(1) Literary History of France , xxlv., 146.

(2) The title is absurd in the premises. The word “ Pragmatic ” is derived from the
Greek rpay/ia and the Latin sancio; and it would be appropriate if the edict sanctioned
some previous ordinance. But this document sanctions nothing.

(3) See Vol. iii., ch. 9. (4) Defense of the Declaration , pt. ii., bk. 2, ch. 9.

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attitude will appear without distortion if we consult, not th0
prejudices of Henri Martin, Beugnot, Faure, or the rank
and file of English authors, but those original sources, the
ueglect of which constitutes the capital sin of a historian.
In this matter those sources are the official documents pre-
served in the Tresor des Chartes (1), and cited by Lecoy de
la Marche ; the pontifical letters collected by Binaldi ; many
documents published by the Bollandists ; and last, but by
no means least, the Registers of Pope Innocent IV., com-
prising many hitherto unknown illustrations of the reign of
that Pontiff, especially in the matter of his relations with
St. Louis, which M. Elie Berger recently unearthed from
the archives of the Vatican and of the National Library of
France (2). In the year 1235 St. Louis attained his major-
ity, and from that time he governed his kingdom by his own
sole authority, although he took frequent counsel from his
wise and holy mother until the end of her life, in 1252. One
of the first communications held with him by the then reign-
ing Pontiff, Gregory IX., was of a nature to indicate that
His Majesty of France was a personage not merely ordinarily
grata to the Holy See ; wo find the Pontiff conceding the
extraordinary privilege of exemption from any possible
interdict to the private chapels of the royal family, and
what was still more wonderful in that age, the king and his
family were allowed to communicate with the excommunicat-
ed without consequence of censure (3). At the renewal of
the struggle between the Holy See and Frederick IL, that
German emperor who proclaimed that “ the world had suf-
fered from three impostors, Moses, Christ, and Mahomet,” we
hear Pope Gregory IX. asking for aid and counsel from His
Most Christian Majesty, invoking the ancient friendship
between the tiara and the lilies, and concluding : “ Just as
the tribe of Juda was called to a special blessing from among

(1) In the National Archives of France.

(2) Registers of Innocent. IV., Paris, 1884-1887. This monumental work merited the '
“ prix Gobert,” from the Aead&nle de9 Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. M. Berger’9 two
introductions, one historical and the other diploraatlcal, form a mine for the polemic
whose duties bring him to a study of this important period of European history ; and the
entire work is another proof of the sagacity which dictated the establishment of the Ecole
Fran raise in Rome.

(3) Tresor des Chartes, Nat. Archives of France, J. 684, 686.

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627

the other tribes, so the kingdom of France is illustrious
above all others through a divine prerogative of honor and
grace. Just as the tribe of Juda, a figure of France, defeated
and subjugated all its enemies, so the kingdom of France,
fighting the battles of the Lord, and combating for the liberty
of the Church in both the East and the West, delivered the
Holy Land from the pagans under the leadership of your
predecessors, reduced the empire of Constantinople to the
Roman obedience, saved Rome herself from a multitude of
perils, and conquered the pest of Albigensian heresy. Just
as the tribe of Juda never abandoned the worship of the
true God, so in the kingdom of France the Christian faith
has never vacillated, devotion to the Church has never weak-
ened, ecclesiastical liberty has never been imperilled ” (1).
Certainly the recipient of this praise had Hot yet shown any
tendency to interfere with the prerogatives of the Holy See.
And in the subsequent years his conduct during the struggle
between the Church and the Empire proved his intense
devotion to the Papacy. Undoubtedly he tried to mediate
between the contending parties, for a love of peace was the
dominant feature of his character ; but his active sympathies
were with the Supreme Pontiff of Christendom. Immedi-
ately on the arrival of the special legate of Pope Gregory IX.
in France, the holy monarch ordered the publication of the
anathema against Frederick which the prelate had brought
and he facilitated the levy of the tax on ecclesiastical benefices .
which was to furnish the means of combating the imperial
enemy of the Church. The English chronicler, Matthew
Paris (sometimes styled Matthew of Paris), tells us that the
Pope wished St. Louis to do more ; that he desired France to .
declare war against Frederick ; and that when St. Louis re-
fused, he annulled the election of one of the king’s uncles, ,
Pierre Chariot, to the bishopric of Noyon. But the truth is,
as we gather from Baronio, that the Pontiff did not desire
immediate war on the emperor, for he was about to try the-
effect of a council on the recalcitrant. As to the affair of
Chariot, the election to the See of Noyon was annulled for
reasons unconnected with the matter of Frederick II. This

a ) lbi% J. 352 ; Invent .. Num. 2,835.

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Chariot was a bastard son of Philip Augustus, and the Holy
See had dispensed with the impediment publicce honestatis ,
in order that the royal wish for his admittance to the priest-
hood might be gratified ; but it was not the intention of the
Pontiff that the higher dignities of the Church . should be
open to one who was tainted by infamous origin. When the
Thirteenth General Council (First of Lyons) was convoked,
and Frederick opposed its meeting by every means in his
power, St. Louis adopted every means to further it. In the
height of his insanity, the German seized the Papal legate
and some French bishops who were accompanying him to
Italy, maltreated them, and imprisoned them. Immediate
preparations for war, however, on the part of France, induced
him to give full satisfaction for the insult. Before the
Council of Lyons could meet, Pope Gregory IX. died ; and
when his successor, Celestine IV., also died, after a reign of
a few days, the intrigues of Frederick, more than probable
infidel though he was, to raise himself to the Chair of Peter,
led to an “ interpontifciuin ” of nearly two years. Then St
Louis voiced the sentiments of Christendom, when he wrote
to the Sacred College this very un-Gallican message : “ Since
there is a question of defending the independence of the
Church, you can rely on the aid of France. Be firm ; throw
off the yoke which has pressed your necks so long! ” (1).
And here we would take advantage of an opportunity to show
the utter unreliability of Matthew Paris, whenever that ultra
English chronicler undertakes to write of French affairs,
fie asserts that St. Louis threatened, in his letter to the
cardinals, to choose a Pope by his own authority, by virtue
of a privilege to that effect conferred on St. Denis by Pope St.
Clement. A Pontiff was soon chosen in the person of Inno-
cent IY., and one of his first acts was to assure the king of
France of his affectionate respect : “ God has already made
your name great among the greatest.” The Pope also be-
sought the aid of his Eldest Son against the perjured em-
peror, who was then conspiring against the personal freedom
<of the head of the Church.

(1) Hclliard-Breholles ; Diplomatic History of Frederick II., In introduction, page
occiii. Paris, 1860.

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THE REIGN OF 8T. LOUIS IX.

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The Thirteenth General Council met at Lyons in 1245, and
by a unanimous vote of the synodald the Emperor Frederick
1L was deposed. But one resource was open to the discon-
certed prince; he might induce the temporal rulers of Christen-
dom to unite against the “ usurpations ” of the arrogant church-
man who presumed to dictate to the salt of the earth. To
gain the king of France to his views would be equivalent
to a conquest of all the other sovereigns of Europe ; therefore,
besides the circular which he sent to every monarch, he sent
to St Louis his chancellor* who was empowered to make the
most brilliant promises. Frederick knew well the spirit
which actuated many of the vassals of the French crowrn ;
therefore he cunningly suggested that Louis should arbitrate
in his cause, “ together with his peers and barons, as became
so grand a monarch and so powerful a state.” He promised
to give to the Church whatever satisfaction this tribunal
should deem proper ; he would accompany the^ French king in
his projected Crusade, and he would not lay down his arms
until the entire kingdom of Jerusalem was conquered. In
return, besides the revocation of his deposition, he would ask
for only one little concession ; he was to be allowed to glut his
imperial vengeance on the Lombards (1). Naturally such
terms were unacceptable to both Innocent IV. and St. Louis*
The latter could not sit as an equal with those vassals whoso
pretensions he was combating ; but for the love of peace, and
in the interest of the Crusade, he consented to intercede with
the Pontiff. Innocent granted the requested interview ; and
in November, 1245, the Most Christian King prostrated
himself before the Sovereign Pontiff in the cloisters of the
abbey of Cluny. The conferences lasted for fifteen days,
Queen Blanche alone assisting. The Pontiff finally an-
nounced that he could not accept the conditions formulated by
the culprit ; but in order to show that he was not averse to an
ultimate reconciliation, he agreed to allow Frederick to wait
upon him at Lyons, there to try to clear himself of the char-
ges, especially of heresy and heinous violence, which the
Christian world had made against him. It is not probable
that either the Pope or the king believed that Frederick

(1) Hoillard-Brkholles ; loc. cit p. cocvl.

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STUDIfa IN CHURCH HISTORY.

Would dare to attempt a formal justification of his notorious
crimes ; at any rate the perverse man affected to regard the
pontifical offer as a refusal of justice, and ere long St Louis
learned that he had resolved to march on Lyons, not for the
purpose of conferring with the Pontiff, but iu order to seize
his sacred person. Then the disgusted monarch broke off
all negotiations ; he announced to the Pope his resolve to
attack the excommunicated traitor, and would have led his
intending crusaders across the Alps, had he not learned that
Frederick had decided to remain in Italy, and had not the
Pontiff ordered him to sheathe his sword. Probably we
have adduced a sufficiency of proofs in the matter of the at-
tachment of St. Louis to the See of Home ; but it will not be
amiss to present a few more instances of an utter absence of
any “ Gallican ” ideas of a false independence on the part of
this Catholic hero. Firstly, then, it has been asserted that In-
nocent IV. condemned a league which certain French barons
formed for the purpose of upholding their own judicial de-
cisions when they differed from those of the episcopal tribu-
nals. But we reply with Wallon (1), that Si Louis was for-
eign to this league, as is fully proved by the absence of his seal
in the original Act. Again, when the monarch returned, from
the Seventh Crusade he received a letter from Innocent IV.,
in which the Pontiff lauded the zeal which he had ever
displayed in defending the rights of French ecclesiastical
establishments against the exactions of some of the royal
bailiffs' and certain barons. “ The king,” says the Pope,
“ does not know of these crimes (when they are committed),
and he grieves when they are brought to his knowledge.”
The many favors which Alexander IV. showered on St. Louis
also show that the king was a prince according to his ponti-
fical heart. And that these concessions were granted simply
because of the vitrue of the applicant, and because Rome
realized that he would never abuse them, is evinced by the
fact that when the king begged that some of the favors might
be extended to his heir, the request was refused. Rome is nev-
«r blind. The relations of St. Louis with Pope Clement IV.,
the last of the potentates who were contemporary with him,

(1) .St- Louis and, Bis Times. Paris, 1865.

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THE REIGN OF ST. LOUIS IX

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indicate a perfect harmony of thought between the two pow-
ers— a thorough true respect for the rights of each. As the
Bollandists expressed the idea : “ Negabat alter alteri quod
justis rationibus concedendum non putabat, nec inde amicitia
Icedebatur .” During the vacancy of the episcopal see of
Rheims, Pope Clement conferred several benefices which were
of episcopal right ; but he soon revoked the collation, lest he
might appear indifferent to the “ right of regalia ” enjoyed by
the French kings (1). St. Louis showed an equal appreciation
of the difference between pontifical and royal prerogatives
when the Greek emperor, Michael Paleologus, having asked
him to arbitrate between the Pontiff and himself, he replied
that such a role was above the powers of even a king of
France, since the Roman Pontiff was the supreme judge in
Christendom. He would promise the emperor merely the
exercise of his “ good offices ” at the pontifical court. When
many of his courtiers advised St. Louis to claim as a royal
fief the county of Melgueil, near Montpellier, then in the
possession of the bishop of Maguelonne, he followed the
advice of Pope Clement, and respected the claims of the
bishop. When St. Louis thought of taxing the merchandise
w hich passed through the port of Aigues-Mortes, which had
been constructed in the interests of pilgrims to the Holy
Land, and wishing only to use the revenue for the mainte-
nance of the port in good condition, he consulted with Pope
Clement ; and received permission to levy the desired imposts,
“after consultation with the bishops of the province, the
barons of the neighborhood, and the consuls of Montpellier,
and on condition that the duties would be moderate and never
afterward increased” (2). Here, then, w'e see St. Louis
asking for the intervention of the Pope in a purely temporal
matter; the Pontiff admits that the king can decide as he
thinks best, and the monarch deems it advisable to follow
the counsel of His Holiness. Certainly a more perfect har-
mony could not have been desired. Did our limits permit,
we could multiply instances of this concord ; but the reader
will probably conclude that the course of St. Louis toward
the Holy See w'as always such as one would have expected,
a priori , so pious a monarch to follow".

(1) See our Vol. tv., p. 211, ct scqq. (2) Bollandists, at Aug. ▼. 485.

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ILL

The best efforts of Pope Gregory IX. had been devoted to
the preparation of a new crusade ; and in the next pontificate
the urgency for such an expedition became extreme. Jeru-
salem, which for some years had been in Christian hands,
was captured in 1244 by the Mussulmans of Egypt, who had
become masters of Syria. Aid from the West was tearfully
sought by the few Christians of the Holy Land whom the
scimetar had spared. But the king of England and the Ger-
man emperor ignored every appeal ; the other princes, St.
Louis excepted, were too feeble to do else than pray to heaven
for the success of >a holy cause. To France, therefore, then,
as always, the reliance of Christendom in every dread emer-
gency, the entreaties of Pope Innocent IV. were directed ;
and St. Louis arose from a bed of sickness, donned the cross,
and having proceeded to Notre-Dame in the dress of a hum-
ble pilgrim, went to Lyons for the blessing of Christ’s vicar
upon his enterprise. It is not our purpose to describe this
expedition. In 1248 St Louis led his army out of France,
not in royal array, but in a pilgrim’s guise, and with bare
feet, to impress his followers with the truth that they were
about to engage in a holy task, and one which needed a special
blessing for its success. In the same penitential dress he en-
tered Damietta, chanting the Te Deum. When the final re.
verse overtook him, he was able to say with the Apostle,
“ Quum infirmor, tunc potens sum,” How much of the re-
sponsibility for the failure of the Seventh Crusade must be
cast upon the German emperor, Frederick II. ? When St.
Louis was about to depart, Frederick feared that a new French
principality would soon be founded in the Orient, and he asked
of the king a promise that all of his conquests should be an-
nexed to the kingdom of Jerusalem. The saint replied that
he would effect nothing to the prejudice of the emperor, but
that he could only promise that all his actions would be for
the good of the Church. Frederick appeared to be satisfied *
he ordered his officers in Sicily not to overcharge the French
for the provisions they would buy in that island. But the
Arab historian, Makrizi, declares that Frederick sent a spec-

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THE ILEIGN OP ST. LOUIS IX. 635

ia 1 messenger, disguised as a merchant, to warn the sultan,
then sick at Damascus, of the French intention to attack
Egypt (1). Such a course was perfectly consistent with the
entire career of Frederick II. He had already shown how
little spirit he had for the Holy Wars, when, in 1227, after
years of incitement by Rome, Italy, Germany, and Hungary,
he had finally set sail from Brindisi, only to return three
days afterward, alleging that he was sick — conduct which
entailed upon him his first excommunication by Gregory
IX. (2). And when finally he did appear in Palestine, it was
only for the annoyance of the Christians, he having hastened
to make an alliance with the persecuting sultan of Egypt
We are justified, therefore, in believing the Arab historian,
when he says that this false Christian (and probably renegade)
betrayed the plans of St. Louis. Joinville, the companion
of the holy monarch during the best years of liis life, and
his most reliable biographer, narrates that when Frederick
heard of the captivity of the hero, he burst into a frenzy of joy,
and gave a grand feast to his court. Then he sent, says the
seneschal, a messenger to the sultan, ostensibly for the pur-
pose of negotiating for the release of the king, but really in
order to insure the prolongation of his durance. In order
to rid ourselves of so unsavory a subject, we hasten to add,
that the later conduct of the German emperor was such as
to confirm the recital of Makrizi. Not satisfied with allying
himself with the Saracens in their own land, he invited to
the Italian peninsula those of them who resided in Sicily ?
and gave them lands around Lucera, in a state which was a
fief of the Holy See. He adopted the manners of the infidels,
composed his bodyguard of them, and chose their prettiest
women for his hours of lasciviousness. Shame like this well

(1) The work of Makrizi is translated in the Bihlintheque des Croisadcn, Vol. iv.

(2) The Bull of excommunication recites that Frederick was thus punished because he
bad, five different times, violated his solemn vows, emitted with the clause that he would
incur excommunication if he broke them ; because he bad not furnished the troops and
money which he had promised to the eastern Christians; because he had despoiled their
king of bis title and his revenues ; because be had prevented the Archbishop of Tarento
from visiting bis diocese; because he had robbed the Templars and Hospitalers of their
Sicilian revenues ; because he had not observed treaties for the keeping of which the Holy
See had become bis security ; because he had robbed of his property Count Roger, a Cru-
sader, and under the protection of the Pope ; because he had Imprisoned unjustly the son
of that Count Roger, etc.— In Labbe, Vol. xl.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

befitted the closing years of the Hohenstaufen, a dynasty the
most salient characteristic of which was a perennial attempt
to destroy the Papacy, an institution which buried it, as it has
buried, and ever will bury, others of the same stamp. The
first use which the Saracens made of their royal captive was
to endeavor to obtain from him an order on the Templars and
the Hospitalers for the surrender of their fortresses in Pales-
tine. When he refused, and the sultan threatened to put
him to the most frightful tortures, the king replied that the
infidel might work his pleasure. At length, liberty was of-
fered to him in exchange for the surrender of Damietta, then
held by the noble Margaret, the queen of Si Louis, with a
small garrison of Frenchmen ; and in addition, for the sum
of a million golden bezants — about two and a half millions
of dollars. “ If the queen consents,” said the monarch, “ I
shall pay that amount for my soldiers, and shall deliver
Damietta as my own ransom ; you must know that such
as I am are not exchanged for money.” One incident that
occurred before the departure of St. Louis from Egypt de-
serves mention as indicative of the true spirit of Christian
knighthood. The sultan had been murdered by his emirs,
and the chief assassin rushed into the presence of the king,
sword in hand, and demanded that Louis should dub him
knight there and then. The wish was not preposterous in
the mind of the Mussulman ; for had not Frederick, the head
of the Holy Roman Empire, knighted the emir Fakr-Eddin ?
But the French monarch could not prostitute an essentially
Christian dignity, and calmly he awaited death from the
horde of indignant miscreants. The majesty of his mien
awed the Saracens ; they drew back, and the disappointed
candidate swore to observe the treaty (1). If this incident
does not give the reader some idea of the ascendency which
St. Louis exercised over the minds even of infidels, we would
remind him that the emirs debated among themselves whether
or not they should offer him the sceptre of the late sultan.
Then Joinville, being asked by the monarch in an apparently
serious tone whether he ought to accept, replied “ that none
but an insane man would receive a diadem from those who

(1) Memoirs of Joinville. Edition of Wailly, p. 185.

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THE REIGN OF ST. LOUIS IX.

635

had murdered the previous wearer.” “ And nevertheless/’
said St. Louis, “ I would accept it ” (1).. Voltaire did not
credit this episode ; but we can understand how St. Louis
may have conceived the sublime idea of availing himself of
the infidel sceptre, or rather of its attendant influence, in
order to convert his new subjects to the faith of Christ.
History furnished him with many precedents for such a
hope.

In 1270 St. Louis entered upon his second Holy War, that
which is known as the Eighth Crusade. The commercial
rivalry of the Venetians and Genoese, joined to the scandal-
ous dissensions between the Templars and the Hospitalers,
had encouraged the Mussulmans to greater progress than
they had ever dared to anticipate ; and the condition of the
Oriental Christians appealed again to the great heart of
France. Tunis was chosen by the king for his base of oper-
ations ; he was persuaded that the Tunisian prince was dis-
posed to become a Christian, and he therefore relied on that
portion of the African coast as his main source of supplies.
But the usually circumspect monarch had been deceived,
perhaps unwittingly, by his brother, Charles of Anjou, who
had an ulterior motive for landing in Tunis, he being desir-
ous of preventing any Tunisian attack on . his kingdom of
Sicily — a worthy intention, but which hampered the main ob-
ject of the Crusade. The reduction of the castle of Carthage
and successive defeats of the Tunisians and other Mussulmans
appeared to augur well for the expedition ; but the delay of
Charles of Anjou to join the Crusaders had already filled the
army with dismay, when a malignant dysentery incapacitated
all for action. Among the many leaders and nobles who
succumbed was the Count de Nevers, the youngest son of the
king ; and soon the holy monarch himself was stricken. To
prepare himself for death was an easy task for one who had
ever lived the life of a saint ; but mindful to the last of the
welfare of the nation committed by God to his care, the
hero gave to his heir a written copy of those instructions
which we read as “The Teachings of St. Louis.” Since this
document is not only a monument of the purest faith of the

(1) Tbid p. 201.

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STUDIES IN CHUBCH HI8T0BY.

Middle Age, but an epitome of as wise a policy ad statesman
ever devised, as well as a faithful mirror of the testator’s en-
tire career, we subjoin some of its passages : “ My dear son, the
first thing I recommend to you is that you direct your whole
heart to the love of God. Beware of anything displeasing
to God ; above all, beware of mortal sin (1). If God sends ad-
versity to you, receive it patiently, knowing that you have
deserved it, and that it will be profitable to you ; if He sends
you prosperity, thank him humbly, so that pride may not in-
jure you (2). Go frequently to confession. Attend all the
services of the Church with great recollection (3). Be gentle
and charitable to the poor and the suffering. Maintain the
good customs of your kingdom, and abolish the bad ones (4),
Do not burthen your people with taxes. Always have around
you worthy men, seculars as well as religious. Hear sermons
willingly ; and eagerly seek for prayers and indulgences. Let
no man be so audacious as to utter a word in your presence
which might lead another into sin ; let no man speak ill of
another behind his back ; and if any one blasphemes God or
His saints, revenge the insult at once (5). Be rigid and loy-
al in the administration of justice. If you know that you

(1) Through all the years of his manhood St. Louis had been accustomed, from time to
time, to tell his familiars how his mother, the saintly Blanche of Castile, bad often said
that she would rather see him dead at her feet than know that he had committed one mor-
tal sin.

(2^ On the glorious field of Massourah he bad prostrated himself, and cried : ** I thank
God for all, good or evil, which He sends to me.”

(3) He had always heard two Masses every day ; and when he was reproved, he would
say : “ These gentlemen would find no fault, were I to spend as much time in the chase or
In other pleasures.”

(4) He had abolished private wars, judicial duels, etc.

(5) From very ancient times It had been customary In France for any man to slap the face
of one who had uttered a blasphemy, or even such a phrase as “ Go to the devil ! ” In the
days of Justinian, and through- ut the empire, death was Inflicted on him who swore by tbe
head or hair of God ( Novella 67). Philip Augustus decreed against blasphemers a penalty
of four golden llvres (about $80.00), and if the culprit was too poor to pay it, he was thrown
into tbe nearest river, and pulled out only when he was nearly drowned. At tbe accession
of St. Louts, men often took tbe law into their own hands, and great cruelties were some-
times practised. Pope Clement IV. remonstrated with St. Louis for allowing such treat-
ment, and insisted that there should be no danger to “life or member” in the punish-
ment. Consequently, in 1289 a royal ordinance mulcted blasphemers in amounts varying
from five to forty livres ; those who could not pay, and were under forty years of age,
were whipped : the other impecunious culprits were pilloried and Imprisoned. Jacques der
Vitry and Etienne de Bourbon narrate how a certain knight, before the issue of this edlcW
gave a very heavy blow to a citizen who had blasphemed egregiously ; and when be was
called to account by the king, he replied : “ He outraged my heavenly Master, and I struck
him even as I would have done had he insulted my earthly king.” 8i. Louis told him to act
similarly when occasion warranted him.

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possess what belongs to another, restore it immediately ; if
the ownership is doubtful, let prudent and just men investi-
gate the matter (1). Let your best endeavors be exerted for
the furtherance of peace within and outside your kingdom.
Maintain the franchises of your good cities and communes ;
for by the strength and wealth of these cities and communes
the peers and barons will be compelled to respect you. Hon-
or and love most especially all religious and all ecclesiastical
persons. It is narrated of my grandfather, King Philip
(Augustus), that when one of his councillors remarked that it
was strange that he should allow certain clerics to interfere with
his rights, he replied that he knew very well that certain cler-
ics so acted, but that when he reflected how very good the Lord
had been to him, he preferred to relinquish some of his rights
rather than raise difficulties with the Church (2). Love and
revere your father and mother, and obey all their commands (3).
As to ecclesiastical benefices, confer them on worthy per-
sons, and after having consulted with prudent men. My son,

(1) His subjects often upbraided 8t. Louis with excessive zeal in the matter of restitution ;
for instance, they said that he had restored to the king of England far more than justice de-
manded.

(2) This passage should be considered by those who think that St. Louis was the author of
the Pragmatic Sanction ; for this monarch was much more scrupulous in ecclesiastical
matters than his grandfather dreamed of being.

(8) People of our day who read the life of St. Louis must think that he carried this filial
deference to an extreme. Joinville, in all simplicity, gives some curious instances of the
subjection of the king to his saintly, but rather imperious mother, even in matters of his
married life. And he Insisted on his devoted spouse, the noble Margaret of Provence, being
in all things an obedient daughter-in-law. The following passage is interesting: “So
severe was Queen Blanche toward Queen Margaret, that she would not permit, so far as
she could have her way, her son to enjoy the company of his wife except at night, when they
retired together. Their favorite palace was at Pontoise, and they preferred it because the
king's apartment was Immediately above the queen’s, a winding stairway connecting them.
On this stairway they used to converse, having arranged with the chamberlains on duty that
when the queen-mother would appear in the corridor leading to the apartment of her son,
they would strike their wands on the door of that apartment ; and then the king would hur-
ry at once to his quarters. In the same way, if the queen-mother was approaching the
rooms of Queen Margaret, the officers would give the signal on her door ; and then she would
hasten to her domicile. On one occasion the king had gone to his wife’s chamber, where she
was lying at death’s door, because of a recent difficult accouchement. Suddenly Queen
Blanche appeared, and taking the king by the band, she exclaimed : ‘ Come away ’ : you have
no business here ! ’ When Queen Margaret saw her mother-in-law leading the king away, she
cried : 'Alas ! you will not allow me to have my lord, either in life or death.’ Then she faint-
ed, and they thought her dying. The king returned to her. and they had much difficulty in
reviving her.” Old chroniclers say that Margaret followed her husband in bis first Crusade,
principally that at last she might have him to herself. But it seems that the gentle queen
really venerated Blanche, and loved her. When the news of the queen-mother’s death
reached Palestine, Margaret showed every token of deep sorrow ; but we note that Joinville
thought that she grieved because of her sympathy with tbe king.

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I instruct you to be ever reverent toward the Church, and
toward the Supreme Pontiff, our father. Honor the Pope, for
he is your spiritual father. Destroy heresy as far as your
power will permit you” (1). When the dying saint had
handed this document to his heir, the future Philip HL, he
had himself raised from his bed, and kneeling, he received
his Sacramental Lord. Then he lay on the ground, which
he had ordered to be strewn with ashes. Having received
Extreme Unction, he calmly awaited his summons to be dis-
solved, and to be with Christ At midnight of August 25,
1270, the everlasting glory of the French monarchy cried :
Now we go to Jerusalem,” and he had gone indeed to the
heavenly Jerusalem.

He who discerns in St. Louis, as he undertakes his cru-
sades, merely the French warrior who is ambitious of conquest,
will not realize the true significance of the monarch’s efforts.
Nor will that significance be grasped by him who regards
St. Louis as possessed by the sole idea of restoring to
Christendom the holy places which were sanctified by the
tears and blood of the God-Man. With St. Louis, under the
cuirass of the Christian warrior throbbed the heart of an
apostle of the Christian faith. He had not designed merely
to subjugate the Holy Land to European or probably French
domination. He had intended to convert the heretical and
Mussulman inhabitants of the Orient ; and to effect that work
his serried battalions were accompanied by a little army of
Dominican and Franciscan friars. According to the chroni-
cle of Primat, these missionaries converted fiv^ hundred
Arabs during the saint’s short sojourn in Saint-Jean-d’Acre ;
and hence we may judge of what they effected during the

(1) The sole ordinance Issued by St. Louis in reference to heresy is dated In 1250. Previ-
ously be had been unable to follow the dictates of his heart by modifying the rigor of his
mother's ordinance of 1229, which was, however, strictly in accord with the common law of
the time. The revolts excited by the remnants of the Albigenses in the south of France
bad forced St. Louis to apply the laws against heresy with rigor. But the submission of
the count of Toulouse caused the barons of Languedoc to cease their struggles againia the
royal authority, and then the king was free to pursue his policy of reconciling the North with
the South. The chief articles of the decree of 1250 are these : “ The properties taken from
heretics in virtue of the ordinance of 1229 shall be restored to them, unless they have fled
from the kingdom, or unless they continue in their obstinacy. Wives shall not lose rbeir
properties on account of the crime of their husbands. The goods of heretics who die in the
fnitb shall be restored to their heirs.

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Seventh and Eighth Crusades. Godfrey de Beaulieu and
Etienne de Bourbon, who saw the converts in France, speak
of many Saracens who were baptized during the king’s first
expedition, and accompanied him on his return, afterward
marrying French women, and raising families which for
many years remained under the direct protection of the crown.
About the time that Pope Innocent IV. sent the Franciscan,
Piano Carpini, into Tartary, our saint sent many other friars
on the same apostolic mission. The results of his enter-
prise were only partial and isolated ; but they show %what
was the policy of St. Louis in that Eastern Question which
was then far more vital than it is in our day. In a word,
his design was to arrest the advance of pagan barbarism, by
force when that was necessary, but constantly and principally
by the Christianization of the orientals. And if we look for
his successors in this order of ideas, where shall we find them ?
“ In the camps, or on a throne ? ” asks Lecoy de la Marche ;
“ among the partisans of Russia, or among the defenders of
the Ottoman Empire ? No ; they will be found, in the hum-
ble tunic of those heroic friars whose glorious path St. Louis
opened. They will be found in the persons of those perse-
vering missionaries who are preaching the Gospel in the
heart of the old oriental world, and who, like certain ambassa-
dors of St. Louis, incur thousands of dangers in order to
probably save a few souls. These men may truly be termed
the heirs of the spirit of St. Louis. When they cross burning
plains and arid mountains, they can sustain their courage
by the thought that they are realizing the dream of the
wisest and most perspicacious of French kings (for three-
fourths of them arc Frenchmen). And when they fall under
the strokes of executioners, when they shed their blood in
the cause which St. Louis championed so vigorously, they
may well be saluted with that exclamation which once greet-
ed the departure of another martyr : ‘ Son of St. Louis, as-
cend to heaven ! ’ ”

IV.

That the thirteenth century, the century of St. Louis, was
the zenith of the Middle Age ; that, together with the twelfth
century, it “ formed the most important, complete, and re-

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splendent period in the history of Catholic society ” (1) ; is
admitted by not only Catholic polemics, but by most of our
modern adversaries, from Voltaire to Guizot. It remained,
however, for the picturesque theist, Michelet, to pretend
that modern skepticism dates from the thirteenth century,
and that the chief personification of the Christian idea in
that period, St. Louis, was a victim of religious doubt.
“ Such was the aspect of the world in the thirteenth century.
At the summit, the ‘ great dumb ox of Sicily ’ (2), ruminating
his questions. Here, man and liberty ; there, God, grace, the
divine foresight, fatality ; at the right, observation proclaim-
ing human liberty ; at the left, logic impelling invincibly
toward fatalism. . . . The ecclesiastical legislator drew back
at the brink, fighting for good sense against his own logic,
which would have precipitated him. This steadfast genius
paused on the, edge of a .sword between two abysses, the
depth of which he realized. A solemn figure of the Church,
he kept his balance, tried for an equilibrium, and perished
in the attempt ” (3). The eloquent historian flattered him-
self that he understood the philosophy of the Angelic Doc-
tor ; but he thought that none of the scholars of the thir-
teenth century appreciated the delicacy of that position
“ between two abysses.” He continues : “ From below, the
world looked up to the elevated region in which he calcu-
lated and understood nothing of the combats which were
fought in the depths of that abstract existence.” Having
invented this tremendous struggle, of course Michelet com-
prehended it. “ Beneath that sublime region raged the winds
and the tempest. Beneath the Angel was man, morality be-
neath metaphysics, St. Louis beneath St. Thomas. In St.
Louis the thirteenth century had its Passion — an exquisite,
intimate, profound Passion, of which previous ages had
scarcely any presentiment I speak of the first laceration
which doubt effected in souls ; when the entire harmony of the

(1) Montalembert ; in the Introduction to his beautiful History of St. Elizabeth of
Hungary.

(2) So the early fellow-students of St. Thomas termed him. He was born in Aquino, a
town of Terra di Lavoro, in the kingdom of Naples ; but that kingdom was then one of the
Two Sicilies.

(3) Michelet : History of France , Vol. il., bk. 4, ch. 9.

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Middle Age was disturbed ; when the grand edifice on which
society had been built began to totter ; when saints cried
against saints, right waged war on right, and the most docile
souls saw themselves obliged to examine and to judge. The
pious king of France, who wanted merely to submit and
to believe, was very soon forced to struggle, to doubt, and to
choose. Humble though he was, and diffident of himself
he had to resist his mother ; to act as arbitrator between the
Pope and the emperor ; to judge the spiritual judge of Chris-
tendom ; and to recall to moderation him whom he would
have preferred to regard as a model of sanctity. Afterward
the Mendicant Orders attracted him by their mysticism ; he
entered the Third Order of St. Francis ; and he took part
against the University. But nevertheless, the book of John
of Parma, received by very many Franciscans, filled him
with strange doubts.” Michelet wastes many pretty phrases
in an attempt to convince his readers that St. Louis was a skep-
tic because he once resisted the will of his mother ; but he did
so in order to don the cross, she having feared, like many
others and even himself, that the expedition might be futile.
Michelet presents the saint as a skeptic because he combated
the University and the pamphlet of William de Saint- Amour ;
but he did so in order to protect the Dominicans and Fran-
ciscans (1). Michelet discerns skepticism in the relations
which St. Louis had with Pope Gregory IX. ; but it is abso-
lutely false that the French king was called upon “ to judge
the supreme judge of Christendom.” As to the book entitled
The Eternal Gospel , it is by no means certain that it was
written by the Franciscan general, John of Parma ; but when
Michelet tells us that the faith of St. Louis must have va-
cillated when he saw some of his Franciscan friends defend-
ing a condemned book, we are asked to believe, not that the
pious king was a skeptic, but that he was a ninny.

Michelet asserts that “the thirteenth century had its
Passion ” ; he perceives in its sombre tableau the creakings
of a social edifice which is about to tumble into chaos, and
he judges that this social disorder must have affected the
faith of men , especially of him who was the foremost layman

<1) Flkory ; Ecclts. Hist ., bk. lxxxiv., ch. 32.

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in Christendom. But the interesting historical writer (a
great historian he is not) ignores the notorious fact that the
eleventh century was far nearer to chaos than the thirteenth.
Let the reader remember the state of Italy and Germany
before and after the German emperor, Henry IV., “ went to
Canossa ” ; a state of affairs that wrung from the heart of St.
Gregory VII. the exclamation, “ I have loved justice and
hated iniquity ; therefore I die in exile.” Certainly the
eleventh century was not a period of skepticism. But Mich-
elet thinks that “ the man, St. Louis,” must have plunged
into the abyss of doubt, because, as he affects to believe, “ the
Angel, St. Thomas,” knew not how to withdraw his faith from
the clutches of his logic. It is true that St Thomas was
frequently the adviser of St. Louis in religious matters, as
he probably was in things political (1) ; but the logic of
Michelet could not have “ clutched ” his mind very firmly
when he arrived at this conclusion. But what authority is
there for the supposition that the Angelic Doctor “ fought for
good sense against his own logic,” and that fearful “ combats
were fought in the depths of that abstract existence ” ? Cer-
tainly neither St. Thomas nor his contemporaries even hint at
such struggles ; and who has found any indications of skepti-
cism in the works of the Angel of the Schools ? Take up the
treatises on the liberty of man, grace, and predestination,
which seem to have sewed as a foundation for the ravings of
Michelet. Of course, we meet the usual videtur quod ; but
with what triumphant serenity the master always pronounces
his patet, or his mani/estum est ! Very different from the
judgment of Michelet and his school is the appreciation of
St. Thomas by one who had studied all the scholastics with
a profundity to which Michelet was always a stranger. In
his admirable work on Abelard, M. Charles de Remusat
says : “ St. Thomas of Aquino includes the whole of theology
in his wonderful work. He lays down the pro and the contra
of every question, and of every proposition in each question ;
and presenting every possible objection and the answer to it,
he opposes authority to authority, reasoning to reasoning,
giving, without ever weakening, without ever doubtingf a work

»1) Bollanmsts; at March, in the Life of St. Thomas.

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which is as dogmatic in its conclusions as it is skeptical in
its examinations. The Surnma Theologica presents the whole
of religion as an immense dialectical controversy, in which
dogma always ends by being in the right. It is the frankest
and most developed negation of dogmatic absolutism.” Now
Michelet seems to hold that as the master is, so is the pupil.
Therefore, since “ St. Louis realized on earth and in practical
life that which preoccupied the genius of St. Thomas in the
world of abstractions ” (1), we may conclude, with all due
admiration for the most poetic pamphleteer (not historian) of
modem times, that the faith of St. Louis was as unshakable
as that of the Angelic Doctor. We have not thought it
proper to waste any of our limited space in quoting any of
the instances of fact which Michelet adduces as pretended
supports of his amusmg theory. They are too puerile for
serious attention ; but the reader may be better satisfied, if
we furnish one specimen which is a worthy exemplification
of all. Michelet discerns skepticism in the mind of St. Louis,
when that monarch asks Joinville : “ What is God? ” The
seneschal thus naively records the incident : “ He called me,
one day, and said : ‘ On account of your subtle mind I do
not like to ask you concerning the things of God ; but since
these friars are present, I shall put one question to you. It
is this : What is God ? ’ ” That here the king was only play-
ing the catechist, half jocularly and half seriously with his
familiar companion, appears from the fact that he compli-
mented Joinville because the seneschal’s reply was identical
with that contained in the book which he then held in his-
hand (2). The fact is, and it serves as another indication of
his character, that St. Louis was very fond of catechizing,
his friends, and even his private soldiers. He also, on,
occasion, preached sermons. During his voyage to Africa,,
the sailors wanted to go to confession; whereupon he
preached to them a discourse on the nature and benefits of
the Sacrament of Penance (3). In his library at Paris, which
was open to the public , he was wont to explain to the nearest

(1) Gori.m ; Defense of the Church , pt. 1., cb.20. Paris, 1853.

(2) Joinville ; loc. eft., p. 194.

(3) Bklloloco ; Life of St. Louis, Id the Collection of Historians of the Gauls ,
Vol. xx.

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student some passage of the works of the Fathers lHiich
generally formed his literary pabulum (1). Once he remind-
ed a lady of the court that she had arrived at an age when
a woman could not occupy her mind with other beauties
than those of her soul, unless she was willing to incur
ridicule (2). Once he asked Joinville what was his father’s
name ; and when the seneschal replied that it was Simon,
he asked the poor man how he knew that such was the case.
Then, says Joinville, “ I told him that I knew it, because my
mother had so informed me. Then he said that we ought
to believe most firmly all the articles of our faith, to which
the Apostles had testified” (3).

Michelet says that St. Louis must have been affected by
the spirit of skepticism which began to invade the Christian
world in his time. “ In St. Louis the thirteenth century had
its Passion. ... I speak of the first laceration which doubt
effected in souls.” He would be indeed an enterprising inda-
gator into the recondite who could determine the date of the
entrance of incredulism into the world ; but when Michelet
discovered that date in the thirteenth century, would he not
have been more worthy of admiration if he had found his
champion skeptic, not in St. Louis, but in the German Fred-
erick II., who regarded Christ as one of the three impostors
who had deceived the world ? (4). Skepticism had infected
humanity long before the thirteenth century. There are three
kinds of skeptics ; those who do not believe in the Catholic
Church, those who do not believe in any of the forms of
emasculated Christianity, and the gross materialists who deny
God and the immortality of the soul. The last form did not
appear in Christendom until about the time of the full devel-
opment of the Renaissance, toward the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury. But the other forms of skepticism appeared in their full
audacity, simultaneously with the intellectual movement of the
eleventh century, when the Manichieans reappeared in France
and in Northern Italy ; when Leu t hard destroyed so many

(1) Ibid.

42) William of Chartres ; Life and Miracles of St. Louis , in the Collection , ubi
myta.

(3) Lnc. cit.% p. 197.

(4) The authority for this accusation is Pope Gregory IX.. in his Epist. 12 to the Archbishop
of Canterbury. See Labbe’s Councils , Cent. XIII.

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religious images ; when Gondulphus preached the absurdity
of Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist ; when Turin and Milan
heard many proclaiming that the Son of God is each soul il-
luminated by the Lord. And then the twelfth century beheld
Tanchelm posing as the Son of God ; Peter de Bruis abolish-
ing churches ; and the Cathari, Patarines, etc., attributing
creation to the devil, and proclaiming fate as master of men.
But the reader may ask, could Michelet have expected men to
credit his presentation of St. Louis as an incredulist ? Well,
the attempt was not extraordinarily audacious at the hands
of him who had not only declared that Pope St Gregory YIL
was a skeptic, but had so far blasphemed as to cast the same
foul aspersion on the Divine Saviour of men : “ There is a
moment of fear and of doubt. Here is the tragic and the ter-
rible of the drama ; it is this which rends the veil of the tem-
ple, and covers the earth with darkness ; it is this which
troubles me when I read the Gospel, and causes my tears to
flow. That Godshould have doubted of God ! That the Holy
Victim should have cried : ‘ My God, My God, why hast Thou
abandoned me ? ’ This trial has been experienced by all heroic
souls who have dared great things for the human race ; all of
these have felt more or less of this ideal of grief. It was in
such a moment that Brutus exclaimed : ‘ Virtue, thou art
only a name.’ It was in such a moment that Gregory V1L
cried : 4 1 have followed justice and hated iniquity : therefore I
die in exile ’ ” (1). The veriest tyro in ascetical or even mod-
erately spiritual matters knows that the expression of the
holy victim of Henry IV. did not issue from a heart submerged
in the despair of doubt ; that the words of the dying Pon-
tiff1 were rather a sublime indication of his invincible trust in
God, of his confidence that a reward in heaven would be the
recompense for an earthly suffering which had been entailed
by his worthy fulfilment of his duties as vicar of Christ. As.
to the calumny against Christ, which Michelet dared to pro-
nounce at the foot of the cross, let us say, with Gorini, that
he only joined the crowd who passed in front of the sacred
tree, blaspheming : “ prcetereuntes autem blasphemabant” The
sublime lessons of the cross were foolishness to Michelet, aa

(1) Loc cit .. Vol. i!., bk. 4,'ch. ®.

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they ever will be to all of his school ; and therefore such as
they cannot understand St. Louis of France. We who have
spent much timfc in the study of the prince who, even accord-
ing to Voltaire, was as pious as an anchorite and (possessed
of every royal virtue, must agree with the judgment of St.
Francis de Sales, that “ St. Louis was the beloved of God and
of men, and one of the grandest sovereigns upon whom the
sun has shone.” We must say, with Chateaubriand : “ Each
epoch has a man who represents it. Louis IX. is the model
man of the Middle Age ; he is legislator, hero, and saint
Marcus Aurelius showed power, united with philosophy ;
Louis IX. power, united with sanctity ; the advantage remains
with the Christian.”

CHAPTER VHL

THE SIEGES OF RHODES ; EPISODES IN THE HISTORY OF THE
SOLDIER-MONKS.*

On June 8, 1476, a solemn silence reigned in the island of
Rhodes. The thirty-eighth grand- rm'-s ter of the glorious
Military-Religious Order of St. John (1) had yielded his va-
liant soul to the God whose Chuvch and people it had
intrepidly served ; and now dissension — perhaps the chief
bane of even those human institutions which are directly in-
tended for the honor of the Most High — was at its fell work
among the knights. Four centuries had elapsed since Ger-
ard Tunc and Raymond Dupuy had founded their celebrated
order in the Holy Land, and a summarization of its utility and
glory during all its vicissitudes would have been made by
saying, crescit eundo. As a bulwark of Christendom against
the hordes of Islam, it had rivalled the brilliant order of the
Temple — that most dazzling of Catholic organizations —
whose rule was one of the masterpieces of St. Bernard ; but
it had succeeded better than the Templars in at least so far

♦ This chapter appeared in the Catholic World , July, 1894.

(l)8uch was the proper title of this celebrated order. A Bull of Pope Paschal II., dated la
1118, confirms Brother Gerard Tunc as ” president of the hospital founded near the church
of St. John the Baptist, in Jerusalem.” Hence the members were also styled “ Hospitalers.”
After the knights had fixed their headquarters in Rhodes, in 1310, they came to be popu-
larly known as Knights of Rhodes ; and in 1530, when they moved to Malta, their designa-
tion was assumed from that istand.

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resisting corruption as not to be engulfed in it (1). Like
that of all the other monastico-military orders, the universal
and indomitable bravery of the Hospitalers is admitted by
historians of every class. In his Bull confirming their stat-
utes, Pope Innocent II. (y. 1130) ordered the following
monition to be read to the novice at his solemn profession :
“ If, which we deem impossible, you should ever turn your
back to the enemies of Christ, or if you should abandon the
banner of the cross, you will be deprived of this holy sign
(the insignia, an eight-pointed cross, embroidered on the
left breast) and cut off from our body as a putrid member.”
It is noteworthy that in all the acts of the order there is but
one instance of this penalty having been incurred. Rash-
ness, however, was not encouraged ; although it is true that
these monastic knights had views concerning the constituents
of rashness which were, perhaps, somewhat extravagant.
Thus, the initiatory oath of a Templar required him “ never
to ask for quarter, and never to decline battle unless the
odds were at least four to one.” On the summer-day of
which we are now writing, sadness might well have been
dominant in every heart which throbbed in the mother-
house of the Knights of St. John. Now that the Templars
were no more, having been suppressed by the Holy See in
1311 ; and now that the followers of the false prophet had
but lately raised their emblematic half-moon over the proud
dome of St. Sophia’s patriarchal cathedral (y. 1453) ; the
Christians of the West realized that their hopes were to be
centred, under God, chiefly on the Knights-Hospitalers.
Rhodes was the advanced sentinel of European religion and
civilization. Placed between Egypt, where the Mamelukes
held full sway, and Asia Minor, where the redoubtable con-
queror of Constantinople was encamped, it had refused to
pay tribute to this prince, and it knew that he had sworn on
the Koran to take the life of every chevalier of the Hospital
who might fall into his hands. Every hope of success for
the Cross in the coming struggle depended on the wisdom
displayed in the imminent election of a grand-master. That
this prudence would be manifested was uncertain, for precise-

(l) See our apposite dissertation on the Suppression of the Templars, Vol. H.

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ly at that time national jealousies were rife in nearly every
preceptory of the order. But heaven had decreed to use the
services of the Hospitalers for many years to come. As the
hour for the election drew near, the chief dignitaries resolved,
in the interest of harmony, to introduce an innovation in the
electoral procedure. They appointed as president of the
Electoral College a knight who had been a candidate in the
last election, and -whose zeal and piety were pre-eminent —
Raymond Ricard. Then all the knights voted for three as-
sistants to the president, who were to be styled the chaplain,
the knight, and the servant of the ceremony. These four
officers swore to seek only the good of Christendom, and then
they chose a fifth ; the five then chose a sixth ; and so on,
until fifteen had been selected— two from each nationality or
“ language ” (1), excepting in the case of the Germans, who
received but one representative, there being very few of them
in the order. Each member of this Electoral College then
took the customary oath, but on a portion of the True Cross,
which he was obliged to touch with his hand. After three
hours of deliberation, the electors announced that their
choice was effected ; and, when all the knights of every grade
and class had assembled in the chapel, an oath was exacted
from each that he would recognize and obey the chosen
grand-master. This precaution might have been omitted, for
when the name of the grand-prior of Auvergne, Peter d’Au-
busson, was proclaimed, the enthusiasm of all was .indescrib-
able.

Peter d’ Aubusson, a scion of one of the noblest families of
France, had made his first campaigns against the Turks, and
in the train of the Dauphin, afterward King Louis XI. ; and
he had shared with that prince in the glory of the battle of
Bale, in 1444, where the Swiss were defeated. But the des-
tined fame of the young noble was not to be attained by
combats against Christians. From his childhood the woes
of the Holy Land had affected his heart ; especially im-
pressed in the memories of his boyhood was the flaying

(1) In the early days of the order there were seven “languages ” ; viz., Italy, France,
properly so called ; Provence, Auvergne, Aragon, England, and Germany. This division
subsisted at the time of which we write ; hut when England became heretical, her “ lan-
guage ” was abolished, and those of Castile and Portugal were added.

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of a papal nuncio by the Mussulmans, while still alive. Then
had come the capture of Constantinople ; and, although his
Catholic mind regarded that event as Heaven’s punishment
of the schismatic arrogance of the Greeks, it showed him
that the West needed to be on the alert if it hoped not to
become the prey of Mohammedan fanaticism. The most
eminent of the European nobility, especially those of his
own fair France, were then wearing their armor over the
cassock, so why should not he also enlist in that holy
militia which warred under the blessing of the Vicar of
Christ, and which was regarded by every Christian youth as
the very apogee of human glory? Therefore, after his
return from the Swiss campaign, D’ Aubusson informed King
Charles VII. of his ambition ; and as that monarch saw no
prospect of any need of the young noble’s services in France,
a truce with the English having lately been arranged, he
granted his permission, remarking to his courtiers : “ I have
never seen so much fire and wisdom united in one man.”
Having taken farewell of his friend the Dauphin, who was
afterward, as Louis XL, to render great assistance to the
Hospitalers in the time of their direst extremity, D’ Aubus-
son proceeded to the nearest preceptory of the admired
order, and donned the monastic tunic. His first military
service as a chevalier of Si John was in the Grecian Archi-
pelago ; and after winning the commendations of the succes-
sive grand-masters, John de Lastic and James de Milly, the
year 1460 found him castellan of Rhodes and prefect of its
finances. John des Ursins, whom he was to succeed in the
superiorship, made him superintendent of the Rhodian
fortifications and captain-general of the city, and from that
moment be was the soul of all the preparations which were
being made for the struggle with Mahomet II. When he
entered upon the grand-mastership, naturally the zeal of
D’ Aubusson redoubled; but a description of all his improve-
ments in the defences of the island would interest only the
military reader, nor are we competent for the task, although
we do not imply that the priest or religious is always
incompetent to understand the mysteries of Mars, especially
when these partake of, or are derived from, the scientific^

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We know that among the priests of the military-religions
orders there were many accomplished generals and engineers,
although they were non-combatants. And in the last cent-
ury the Jesuit, F. Carlo Borgo of Vicenza, wrote a work on
fortifications which so pleased the “ great ” Frederick of
Prussia, that he forwarded to the author a commission as
lieutenant-colonel in his army — an “ honor ” that was not
accepted. (1).

Among the preparations which demanded the prompt
attention of D’Aubusson, was an increase of the garrison ;
his letter to all the houses of the Hospitalers throughout
Europe is pathetic in its religious patriotism and earnest-
ness, and it resulted in an almost complete renunciation, on
the part of every establishment, of all their possessions,
that means might be obtained for the relief of the mother-
house. Indeed, when we remember that just then the
Knights of St John were bearing the brunt of a shock
directed against all Europe, we must admit that besides
offering up their lives —which they valued lightly in so
tremendous a contingency — these heroes did far more than
their share in procuring the sinews of war. But the grand-
master soon experienced the joy of seeing his religious
reinforced by many of the best soldiers of Europe, especially
of France and Italy. As was his duty and his pride, to say
nothing of the traditions of the Roman See, ever foremost
in advancing or upholding the standard of civilization, Pope
Sixtus IV. contributed large sums from the papal treasury,
and ordered a Jubilee in aid of the Knights. D’Aubusson
also wrote to King Louis XL, reminding him of their ancient
comradeshij^, and sending to the royal zoological collection
some curious beasts and birds. Louis showed his own
good memory by a large gift to the treasury of Rhodes.
By means such as these the grand-master was enabled to
purchase much-needed war material and provisions, not
only for the garrision of religious and for his volunteer
auxiliaries, but also for the sustenance of the Rhodians, whose
means of subsistence would be destroyed by the Moslem

(1 ) For tbe distinction between the combatants and the non-combatants In tbe Military'
Religious Orders, see this Volume, p. 186.

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invasion, whichever way the struggle ended. One of the
last measures taken by D’Aubusson before the conflict
indicates the scrupulous devotion of these soldier-monks to
their semi-monastic obligations. It will be readily under-
stood, by any of our readers who belong to a religious
community, that the fulfilment of the ordinary conventual
duties was an impossibility to our Knights in the circum-
stances then surrounding them. The grand-master, there-
fore, besought the Pontiff to grant the brethren of the
Hospital, then under arms in Rhodes, such dispensations as
His Holiness might deem appropriate. Accordingly, the
Knights were freed from every obligation excepting, of course,
those entailed by the three vows of obedience, poverty, and
chastity.

Meanwhile, the sultan prepared for wliat he regarded as
the chief enterprise of his wonderful career, not excepting even
his Constantinopolitan campaign. Besides the last remnant
of the oldenByzantine Empier, he had subjugated Thrace,
Macedonia, Greece, Servia, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bosnia.
Nearly all the islands of the Archipelago had also succumbed
to the son of Amurath, and from the campanile of St. Mark’s
the dismayed Venetians had seen the flames devouring the
rich possessions of the Queen of the Adriatic, only a few
miles from their own lagoons ; hence The Most Serene was
fain to buy exemption from the same fate by a promise of
an annual tribute to the Sublime Porte of the — for that
time — exorbitant sum of eighty thousand golden scudi.
Circassia, Georgia, and even the Crimea, had become Mus-
sulman. In the midst of this ruin of so many national-
ities, indomitable Rhodes, defended by a mere handful
of religious, strong in their faith and their own self-abne-
gation, rather than in tlieir incontestable valor, awaited
imperturbably the onslaught of the “Alexander of Islam.”
From the Rhodian Greeks, generally termed Rhodiotes,
the Knights could not hope for much assistance. Most
of these islanders were indeed Catholics ; but there were
many who were descended from persons who had joined
the Photian Schism when the island was a Byzantine depen-
dency. These were Schismatics, and naturally they hated

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the Knights, who were a source of strength to what they"
called “ Latinism.” To this party probably belonged the
one of the Rhodian traitors who gave much trouble to the
Hospitalers. This mao, Meligalo by name, was of noble-
birth ; and had dissipated his patrimony in debauchery.
He thought to restore his fortunes by revealing the military
secrets of the island to Mahomet. Having drawn exact
plans of the fortifications, he proceeded to Constantinople
and sold his information.

Mahomet began his Rhodian campaign by an attack on the
islands of Piscopia, Nizzaro, Calamo, and Cefalo, which were
ravaged, and saw all their able-bodied men and boys carried off
into slavery (1), the women being destined for Eastern harems.
On May 23, 1480, the Turkish expedition, commanded by
Mesis Virzir, appeared before Rhodes. In the siege which
followed, all of the Catholic Rliodiotes, inspired by the de-
votion and'bravery of D’Aubusson, rivalled the Hospitalers
and their auxiliaries in zeal and patience. The aged, the
women and children, and even the nuns, helped indefatigably
to repair the damages caused by the enormous balls of
granite — two feet in diameter — which the Turkish balistas
discharged, night and day, against the ramparts and into the
town. Several assaults were made against Fort St. Nicholas,
perhaps the key of the place ; but the heroism of the knights
of the Italian “ language,” led by the commander, Fabrizio
Carretto, rendered the desperate courage of the Moslems a
mere waste of blood. In his blindness concerning the spirit
animating the defenders, Mesis Vizir thought that if lie could
procure the death of the grand-master, the city would yield.
Accordingly, the few traitors within the Christian lines were
instructed to poison D’Aubusson. But the design was dis-
covered, and the enraged populace tore the miscreants limb
from limb. This attempt having failed, the pasha essayed
another assault, and this one was made at night. The com-
bat lasted for hours, and an immense number of the Islam-
ites perished. D’Aubusson seemed to be omnipresent ; and
if any of the knights would fain have sunk in their sanguin-

(1) In accordance with the Turkish custom of that day, the healthy boys were made
cadets in the famous Janissaries, and of course were trained as Mohammedans.

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&rj fatigue, his cheery cry of “ Mountjoy and St Denis ! ”
and the example of his good right arm, gave them confidence
that numbers would not avail against the soldiers of Christ
and the sons of Mary. With the dawn of morning the pasha
found that, while the flower of his army had perished, he was
no nearer to the attainment of his object then he had been
when still in the Dardanelles. The futility of another as-
sault, made simultaneously on every part of the works, led
him to adopt a curious stratagem. His archers affixed to
their bolts pieces of parchment, on which were described the
alleged tyranny of the Hospitalers, men foreign to Rhodes
and to the fallen Lower Empire ; and then were de-
scribed the glories and sweet disposition of Mahomet II., the
favored by Allah, the tolerant prince who was so well-dis-
posed to Christianity, so desirous of satisfying the aspira-
tions of all his subjects, that he would accord full religious
liberty in their lovely isle (1). When Mesis Virzir learned
that the Rhodiotes treated his missives with scorn, he
turned his overtures to D’Aubusson. A flag of truce ob-
tained for an envoy an interview with the hero; and after an
exalted estimate of the sultan’s power had been unfolded,
the unconquerable valor of the Moslem soldiery was extolled.
Then an appeal was made to the grand-master as prince and
as general. As prince, observed the turbaned pleader, D’Au-
busson ought not to expose his subjects, the devoted Rho-
diotes, to the horrors of war ; as general, he should have
regard for his soldiers. Let him, therefore, concluded the
envoy, surrender Rhodes ; and the possessions of the Order
of St. John would be ever respected by the sublime Porte.
The reply of the Christian leader was simple and to the
point. By one path alone could the followers of the Crescent
enter into Rhodes; it might be the duty of the pasha to try
to open that path, but it certainly would be that of the Hospi-

(1) It would be Interesting to know whether. In this mendacious document, the pasha
made use of that story which has been credited by many European writers, to the effect
that Mahomet II. was bom of a Christian mother, Irene, daughter of Prince George Bui •
covich, despot of Servia. This presumed Christian origin is an absurdity ; firstly, because
Mahomet was bom in 1430, and Amurath married Irene In 1435. Secondly, because a son
of Irene could have been only fifteen years old when Amurath died in 1451 ; and all the
Turkish chroniclers describe Mahomet as inheriting the Ottoman sceptre when he was in
bis twenty -second year.

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talers to oppose him to the death. Another assault, there-
fore, was now made on the stronghold ; and this time the
Islamites succeeded in penetrating through a breach. But
suddenly D’Aubusson, accompanied by his brother, the Vis-
count de Monteil, showed himself at the head of a picked
body of knights, and, though the enemy outnumbered his
followers, together with those originally defending the breach,
by twenty to one, the further advance of the half-moon was
stopped. Blood flowed as it had not flowed since the siege
began. Many times the standard of St. John fell out of
sight, as its bearer was cut down ; but just so often it was
again waved on high as another intrepid hand grasped its
staff, and with cries of “ To us, Jesus and Mary ! ” and “ To
us, St John ! ” revived the strength — not the courage, for
that never failed — of the devoted band. Finally, with an
exhibition of valor which the Turks afterward described as
superhuman, the soldier-monks drove the infidels out of the
city, pursuing them into their intrenched camp, and from the
very tent of the pasha carrying off in triumph the great Stan-
dard of Islam. If, in this last attempt to capture Rhodes
which that century witnessed, the lieutenant of Mahomet
II. felt a shame proportioned to the extent of his defeat, he
found some consolation in an explanation of that defeat given
by his fatalistically inclined followers. They insisted that
during the most intense part of the struggle within the walls
they had plainly seen, “ high up in the air, a shining cross
of gold, and a virgin clothed in white, carrying a lance, and
followed by a troop of richly-armed warriors.” None of the
knights mentioned any such vision ; and probably it was
either an hallucination of the highly-wrought imaginations
of the Moslems, or a cleverly devised excuse for their fail-
ure. Be this as it may — and, of course, we do not deny the
possibility of the appearance — the presumed miracle had
the effect of soothing their pain ; for, they reflected, since Al-
lah had thus protected the Christians rather than the true
believers, mortal Mussulman could do no more. It may
have been owing to his real or affected belief in this prodigy
that Mahomet II. did not consign his discomfited general to
the bowstring, but contented himself with sending the un-

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fortunate into exile. We do not know the exact number of
the troops with which Mesis Vizir attacked Rhodes ; but he
admitted that on the day after the final failure he found that
his dead and seriously wounded were more than twenty-five
thousand. When we consider that the Knights Hospitalers
engaged in the defence numbered only 450, and their aux-
iliaries 2,000, we do not wonder that D’Aubusson regarded
his victory as miraculous, and that the hostile fleet had no
sooner set sail than he summoned his little band to the
cathedral for a solemn thanksgiving to God and Our Blessed
Lady. When the news of this event, so important to the
welfare of Christendom, reached the Holy See, the Pontiff
determined to signify his appreciation of the chivalrous
devotion and sublime piety of the Order of St. John by an
act which would reflect glory upon the entire organization,
as well as upon its immediate beneficiary. He forwarded a
cardinal’s hat to the grand-master.

After the hopelessness of capturing Rhodes had been im-
pressed upon his unwilling mind, Mahomet II. confined his
ambitions to objects of easier attainment ; but when his suc-
cessor, Bajazet, manifested an inclination to emulate the
enterprises of his father’s earlier years, D’Aubusson’s
activity seemed to indicate a renewal of youth. Incessant
hostilities in the Adriatic, in the Archipelago, and on the
coast of Greece, gave abundant employment to the dashing
navy of the Hospitalers ; but the astute grand-master thought
that all these minor skirmishes were a mere waste of time,
blood, and money. He told the Pope that if Christendom
was seriously bent on at least checking the advance of the
Crescent, a great blow must be struck ; let a Christian fleet
force its way into the Dardanelles, bum Gallipoli, and mak-
ing a dash on Constantinople, burn it also, if it could not be
permanently retained. The moment was favorable, urged
the veteran ; for the attention of Bajazet was then drawn by
the advance of a new enemy and Mussulman rival, the Sliah
of Persia, into Armenia. At first the powers agreed to form
a league to carry out the bold design ; but alas ! the latter
part of the fifteenth century was true to itself — it was the
vital end of the Middle Age ; and already men might anticir

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pate the remark afterward made to Leibnitz by Pomponne,
Minister of Louis XIV., that Crusades were no longer
the fashion. Sorrow rankled in the heart of the old soldier-
monk ; perhaps he foresaw that twenty years after this cul-
pable negligence on the part of the Christian governments,
the same neglect would be manifested by an ambitious and
egoistic emperor (Charles V.), who could not for an instant
compromise his petty schemes in the Milanais for the sake
of Christendom ; and that Rhodes, the most important out-
post of Christianity, and therefore the beacon light of civiliza-
tion, would capitulate to the Crescent. The chagrin of the
hero entailed an illness which terminated fatally on July 3,
1503 ; and throughout the Catholic world there ensued deep
and long-lasting mourning for him who had for many years
been styled the “Liberator,” and the “ Shield of the Church.”
The chronicles of the time show that, as was quite natural
and appropriate, the obsequies of Cardinal Grand-Master
d’Aubusson were far more ornate and ceremonious than the
Hospitalers, in their monastic simplicity, were wont to ac-
cord to their deceased brethren. The body was carried to
the council hall, and placed on a catafalque covered with
cloth of gold. Around stood knights in habits of mourning
and bearing the cardinalitial hat, the cross, the standard of
St. John, and the escutcheon of the deceased. On his
breast was a golden crucifix, his hands were encased in silk
gloves, and his feet wore slippers of cloth of gold. Beside
the remains were the robes of a prelate, his well-worn armor,
and the glorious sword yet tinged with Moslem blood, which
he had wielded at the siege in 1480. Not only all the reli-
gious, his comrades at the altar and on the field of battle,
kissed his pure though valiant hands ; the common people
and peasantry, groaning and beating their breasts, also ten-
dered him that homage, for D’Aubusson had been known as
the father of the Rhodiote poor. When the body was
brought out of the palace of the grand-master, an immense
cry of lamentation went up to heaven, and women tore their
hair in their extreme grief. After the burial in the vaults
of the church of St. John, the hero’s maggiordomo broke
his marshal’s baton over his tomb, and his squire did the

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flame with the spurs (1). Thus was laid to rest the body of
one of the greatest and most valiant captains that ever drew
sword in the cause of Holy Church. The glorious Order of
St. John produced many real heroes and true religious ; but
of its grand-master, the Cardinal D’Aubusson, it might well
say :

“. . . Sifractm illabatur orbis,

Imjtamdum ferient mince. ”

After the death of the heroic D’Aubusson, the two suc-
ceeding grand-masters entertained little anxiety concerning
the safety of Rhodes. The memory of the signal defeat of
1480 was too fresh in the mind of Bajazet, the son of Ma-
homet II., to allow him to do more than threaten to under-
take an enterprise which had proved too mighty for his more
warlike father. But in 1513, the Grand-Master Fabrizio
Carretto, of the “ language ” of Italy, began to anticipate an
attack from Selim. This sultan had already subjugated
Egypt and Syria, and Persia seemed about to succumb
to his arms. He was known to be anxious for fame, and
hence Carretto bent all his energies to render the island
fit to sustain another siege. He engaged the services of
two eminent Italian engineers for the erection of new and
powerful fortifications, and he augmented the navy of the
order ; but his exertions were terminated by death. When
the knights assembled for the election of a new master, it
was found that three competitors divided their sympathies.
These were Villiers de lTle-Adam, grand-prior of France ; the
Commander d’ Amaral, a Portuguese, chancellor of the order,
and grand-prior of Castile ; and Thomas Ocray, grand-prior
of England. The Englishman had no great merits beyond
the possession of powerful relatives who might be of some
service to the order ; hence his name was dropped when the
importance of a wise selection became manifest. Apparently
the Portuguese had more valid claims for the suffrages. He
was a skilful commander, both on sea and on land ; but he
was overbearing and conceited, and on reflection the electors

(1) For the facts concerning Cardinal D’Aubusson we have relied on the Lives of the
Grand- Masters of the Holy Order of St. John of Jerusalem , Written by the Com-
mander, Brother Girolamo Marulli. Naples, 1636. Also, on Daru’s Republic of Ven-
ice. Paris, 1821 ; and on Flandrln’s History of the Knights of Rhodes. Paris, 1876.

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deemed it dangerous to confide the magistral staff to such
hands. There remained, therefore, Yilliers de l’lle-Adam
a knight of great nobility of character, a man prudent in
counsel, a veteran of a hundred battles, a fine strategist
and a true religious. With but one exception all the votes
were cast for the grand-prior of France ; the exception being
the vote of the disappointed Portuguese, who so far forgot
himself as to cry : “ May ruin fall on Rhodes and the order ! ”
Unfortunately, no attention was then paid to his chagrin;
and only when it was too late did the knights discover that
the miserable man had already become a renegade in his
heart. At the very time that lTle-Adam received the staff
of grand-master of the Hospitalers, the throne of the Otto-
man empire was inherited by Soliman II., a prince of greater
audacity than his father, Selim, and who was fresh from that
victorious campaign against the Hungarians which had re-
sulted in the reduction of Belgrade. It was said that he
regretted the conquests of his ancestors, since now he had a
smaller number of victories before him. In his exalted im-
agination he saw the Order of St. John constantly taunting
him with the injuries which it had heaped upon the Crescent :
with the defeat of Osman (y. 1310), and the abortive attempt
of Orcan to avenge his father (y. 1323) ; with the innumerable
naval disasters of the Ottoman fleets, which never dared to
meet the galleys of the Hospital on equal terms ; with the
successful assistance given to the rebellious Mussulmans of
Egypt ; and with that most disgraceful catastrophe that ever
befell the Islamites, the failure of Mahomet II. to crush the
indomitable spirit of D' Aubusson. And never could Soliman
expect again so favorable an opportunity to sweep the hated
order from the face of the earth. The knights could rely just
then upon no aid from the western powers. The struggle
for supremacy in Italy was of more importance to Charles
Y. than any interest of the Church or of the Christian body-
politic. His chivalrous adversary, Francis I., would have
strained every nerve to aid a cause which appealed to his
soldierly instincts, and to the Catholic traditions of his
crown ; but the fortunes of war had been adverse to him, and
he was reduced to unwilling inactivity. The Pontiff wras of

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do value in a military sense. The Venetians who, by means
of their powerful fleet, could have extended more valuable
aid than either France, Spain, or the Empire, were envious
of the maritime power of the Hospitalers ; the rest of Italy
was too deeply involved in the combat between France and
Austria-Spain. Hungary was prostrate before the half-moon.
And still another encouragement to attack Rhodes was fur-
nished to Soliman from within the very council-chamber of
the Hospitalers. The Portuguese chevalier, D’ Amaral, had,
as he afterward expressed the idea, “ sold his soul to the
demon ” ; and immediately after his failure to obtain the
grand-master’s staff he had sent to the sultan a plan of the
Rhodian fortifications, and all other information valuable to
an intending aggressor. And the Turk was still further aided
from within the Christian lines by the cunning of a Jewish
physician, who had feigned conversion to Christianity in
order to play the spy more efficiently. ;

The intentions of Soliman soon became apparent to the
grand-master ; and he held a reyiew of the garrison, that he
might judge of its fitness for the coming trial. There were
less than 300 Hospitalers, of whom the “ language ” of
France contributed 140 ; those of Spain and Portugal, 88 ;
that of Italy, 47 ; England and Germany together, only 17.
But these soldier-monks were truly a cor ps-d' elite ; right
worthy to uphold the standards of Jesus and Mary ; men
who realized thoroughly the sublimity of their vocation to
the evangelical counsels, and soldiers who felt that they
combatted under the prayerful eyes of the Supreme Pontiff"
of Christendom. To these veterans of a hundred holy fights
were joined many gentlemen of various lands, each followed
by some soldiers who were equipped and maintained at his
expense. Then there were the auxiliary troops in the service
of the knights, men who wore the insignia of the order, and
fought under its banners ; but who took no religious vows,
and did not reside in the convent. Their officers were always
Hospitalers, and as a rule these auxiliaries imbibed much of
the spirit of their patrons. Many of them in time joined
the brotherhood ; but not as knights. To become a knight,
four quarterings of nobility, on the side of both father and

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mother, were requisite. The inferior brethren were styled
“ serving brothers,” and they were obliged to recite the Lord’s
Prayer one hundred and fifty times each day. These
auxiliaries increased the total force to about 5,000 men
One Italian knight who had only lately entered the order
must be especially mentioned : namely, the engineer-in-chief,
Martinenghi. A native of Brescia, and regarded as the first
engineer of his time, he had been employed by Venice to
fortify Candia, and he had rendered it almost impregnable.
Entering the service of the Hospitalers, he was so impressed
by their piety, courage, and self-denial, that he begged for
admittance into the holy militia. Very soon he had so
distinguished himself that he was raised to the grade of
grand-cross (1) and was made superintendent of the fortifi-
cations. Perhaps the heroic prolongation of the resistance
to the arms of Soliraan was chiefly due to the inventive
genius of this Italian engineer. When THe-Adam had made
all the military preparations possible, lie began — if indeed
this was not always being made — the preparation of the
souls of his brethren. The Great Standard of St. John was
-entrusted to the care of a French knight named Grole-Pacim ;
and the honor of bearing at the side of the grand-master
during the battle the banner of the Crucifixion, a present
from the Holy See to the Cardinal Grand-Master d’Aubusson,
was accorded to the Chevalier de Tintenille, a nephew of
l’lle- Adam. Then the entire garrison, or rather community,
began a series of prayers, fastings, and scourgings ; and these
devotional exercises did not cease until the hostile sails were
descried in the offing. Then the heroes were ready to draw
their swords in the holiest of causes ; and they smilingly
committed its issue into the hands of God.

It was on the 26th of June, 1522, that Mustapha, a brother-
in-law of Soliman, anchored a fleet of about 400 vessels
in front of Zimboli, five miles from Rhodes. Here he dis-
embarked 100,000 men and 300 cannon. These were to be
followed in a few days by Soliman in person, at the head
of another army of equal strength. The grand-master im-

(1) There were three grades of Kntghts-Hospitalers ; the chevaliers or simple knights,
the knlghts-commanders, and the knigbts-grand-cross.

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mediately left his palace, which he was never again to
inhabit, and established his headquarters at the advanced
post of Our Lady of Victories, a position which the last
siege had proved to be the most exposed of all in the enceinte
to assault. As in the narrative of the siege of 1480, we shall
avoid details and present only the most important points of
this memorable event. The first balls of the Turks were
received and returned by the bastions confided to the
languages of Provenge, Spain, and England; and no less
than twenty times were the Moslems driven from tlieir
trenches by the impetuous sorties of these knights. This
unexpected result of the first operations demoralized even
the Janissaries, then, as ever, the choicest troops in the Ot-
toman service ; and when the account reached Soliman, he
hastened to the scene with his reinforcements. While the
siege was being pressed with greater vigor, a conspiracy
was formed among the Mohammedan slaves — prisoners of
war as yet unransomed. The design was to fire the town in
many places simultaneously ; but the discovery of the plot,
and the public execution of the leaders, prevented any more
attempts of that nature. But there was another source of
serious mischief which, originating in only one person, was
less easily discovered. Mention has been made of a Jewish
physician, a feigned convert, who acted as a spy for the Mos-
lems (1). To him the knights owed the foiling of some of
their most promising schemes. One effect of his machina-
tions was especially injurious to the besieged. From the
top of the cathedral tower one could easily observe every
movement of the Osmanlis ; and here the grand-master was
wont to watch for hours at a time. By advice of the
Jew, the Ottoman fire was directed against this tower until
it tumbled to the ground. From the moment that Soliman
appeared on the scene, every means known to the science of
engineering at that time, every strategy of good general-
ship, and the most prodigal sacrifice of life, were adopted to
crush the defiant and persistently confident knights of St.

(1) The Hospitalers also employed spies. The most successful of these was a serving
brother named Raymond, who, speaking Turkish and Arabic perfectly, and having so-
journed in Mohammedan lands many years, was able to pass as one of the fatthfuL Ho
was wont to employ certain signals, and then shoot his message over the walls-

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John. Having perceived, as had Mesis Vizir in the last
siege, that Fort St. Nicholas was the key of the town, the
sultan directed, during ten successive days and nights, a
constant fire from twenty-two of his heaviest guns against it ;
but in vain. The guns of the Hospitalers were better served
than his own, and Soliman beheld his soldiers surely and
quickly disappearing. At last, after many murderous
assaults upon various and separate portions of the works, a
simultaneous attack was made on every point. Beaten back
everywhere else, the Turks effected a lodgment in the bas-
tion entrusted to the language of Spain, and the aga of the
Janissaries there planted his standard. Then ensued a strug-
gle of several hours, at the end of which the Mussulmans
retreated to their entrenchments, leaving behind many of
their banners and 15,000 dead. But the Ottoman superior-
ity in numbers began to speak eloquently of the probable
doom of Rhodes ; every day the breaches yawned wider and
wider. To add to the general distress, it was found that
.the supply of powder was nearly exhausted. , Before the
siege, and while there was yet time to augment the stock,
the Portuguese traitor, D’ Amaral, whose duty it was to
inspect the magazines, had reported a sufficiency of the
indispensable requisite. But the Hospitalers did not lose
^courage ; they merely studied the aiming of tlieir guns more
carefully, and began to manufacture powder in mills impro-
vised in the vaults underneath the palace of the grand-master.
Fortunately they possessed a large quantity of carbon and
nitre. The treachery of D’ Amaral had failed precisely
where he had thought it would be most efficacious ; and
just as during the first weeks of the siege, so now, every
assault of the Osmanlis, though made with their natural
bravery intensified by religious zeal and desperation, failed
ignominiously before the heroic patience of the Knights of
St. John. So furious did Soliman become, that he would
have ordered his general, Mustapha, brother-in-law and
favorite though the unlucky man was, to be flogged to death,
had not all the pashas united in prevailing upon him to
banish the unfortunate. Having realized that his choicest
troops were no more, and that the Hospitalers were as

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Tesolved as ever, the sultan now began to think seriously of
abandoning his bloody enterprise. Suddenly a message
from the wretched D’ Amaral filled him with new hope. The
recreant chevalier informed Soliman that the defenders
<50uld not possibly resist many days longer ; let the monarch
press a few more assaults — he could afford the loss of a few
more thousands — and the place must be his, were that end to be
due only to the sheer exhaustion of the few remaining knights.
The sultan withheld the order to raise the siege ; but he who
had induced this change of mind had already received the
punishment of a traitor. His disloyalty had been discovered ;
his habit had been torn from him, his knightly spurs had
been knocked off by the hangman, and the caitiff who might
have been an earthly St. Michael was decapitated (1). Mean-
while the Osmanlis pushed forward their trenches, and opened
fresh mines. Several more assaults were made ; but Soliman
found himself no nearer to the object of his desires. He now
began i:o reflect on the necessity of offering to the Hospitalers
honorable terms of capitulation. The ramparts of Rhodes
were nearly ruined, and the town might almost be termed an
open place ; but he knew that even his Janissaries hesitated
to confront the indomitable defenders in another attack.
Six months of siege had cost him the lives of 114,000 men,
He ordered a white flag to be displayed before the trenches,
and two soldiers advanced to the walls, bearing a letter to the
grand-master. This first offer of Soliman was rejected, for
the knights were constantly scanning the horizon in hope of
descrying approaching aid from the European powers. But
at length l’lle- Adam presented the matter to the Chapter.
Each member declared that a capitulation was proper, nay,
necessary. To save Rhodes was now beyond the bounds of
human possibilities. If the place were tpken by assault, the
inhabitants would either be massacred or carried into slav-
ery ; all the objects so venerated by the Order of St. John, the
churches, the relics of the saints, the tombs of their brethren,
would be defiled by the infidels. They were all willing to
die with their grand-master, if he gave the word ; but they
did not think that duty called upon the order to sacrifice the

(1) The Jewish physician had been detected and hung several days previously.

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lives of women and children for a point of mere military
pride. And for that matter, the honor of the knights was in
no jeopardy. At this juncture the grand-master learned that
heavy reinforcements of men and material had reached the
enemy, and that Soliman requested him to visit the imperial
quarters, there to consult as to the terms of capitulation.

With a heart bursting with anguish the veteran complied
with the invitation. When the two dignitaries met — what a
subject for a soulful painter ! — the grand-master immediately
produced the document wherein Sultan Bajazet had coven-
anted for himself and his successors to respect the indepen-
dence of Rhodes. For answer Soliman tore the parchment
into shreds, and trampled them into the dust But in a
moment, as though deeply impressed by the calm dignity of
Tile- Adam, and probably ashamed of his ebullition of dis-
respect for his father’s sign-manual, he expressed regret at
being compelled to eject so old a man from his home, and
after complimenting his foe upon his knightly worth, he
promised him great rewards if lie would abjure Christianity
and enter the service of the Porte. The interview terminated
by the signing of the terms of capitulation, and if we consider
the violent nature of Soliman, and the weakened situation of
the knights, the conditions were highly honorable to the
Hospitalers. Of course all the possessions of the Order of
St. John in Asia passed into the hands of the Turks ; but the
knights were allowed to embark with all their movable prop-
erty, the sacred vessels, their archives, money, plate, and
books. They could also take as much artillery and ammuni-
tion as was necessary for the equipment of the ships which
bore them away. The sultan agreed to respect the churches of
the island, and to allow full religious liberty to the inhabit-
ants ; but it is almost needless to note that this promise
was shamefully violated. The churches were all defiled, and
some destroyed. The altars were profaned, and the tombs
of the grand-masters were opened, the ashes being scattered
to the winds. Every dwelling was sacked, and the inhabitants
were subjected to the wonted licentiousness of a Mohamme-
dan army. Thus terminated a siege in which 5,000 Chris-
tians withstood for six months the efforts of 200,000 Mo-
hammedans.

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On January 1, 1623, tlie little remnant of the glorious
Order of St John embarked on galleys painted in black, as
a sign of its grief. Only one flag was visible in the fleet,
the one floating from the mainmast of the grand-master’s
vessel, and it was the standard of Our Lady with the motto :
u Afflict is Spes Mea Rebus — Thou art my reliance in my
misfortune.” Villiers de lTle-Adam led his gallant brethren
to the Eternal City, and at its gates he was received formally
by the entire pontifical household in robes of ceremony, by
all the cardinals then in Rome, and by the ambassador of
France. The reception of the grand-master by the Sover-
eign Pontiff was naturally most touching (1), and the veteran
soldier of the Cross felt that the thanks of the Vicar of
Christ were an earnest of the reward which God held in
store for his faithful champions. Viterbo was assigned as
a residence for the knights, and during several years they
led a purely conventual life, though ever on the search for
a new centre where they might resume their military ac-
tivity, and thus continue the noble traditions of the Hospital.
And ere long Providence hearkened to their prayer. The
Turkish corsairs were then terrorizing the Italian coasts at
their pleasure, and Charles V., master of Sicily and the
neighboring islands, well realized how much benefit would
accrue to that portion of his dominions if the Order of St.
John undertook to dispute the supremacy of the Mediter-
ranean with the Osmanlis. Accordingly, he offered to it
the island of Malta and its dependencies, as well as the
principality of Tripoli, with full sovereign and proprietary
right. Villiers de lTle-Adam cheerfully accepted the new
responsibility ; and on October 26, 1530, the knights made
their solemn entry into Malta, thus inaugurating the third
period of the glorious history of the Military Order of St.
John, — a period which endured, in spite of many attacks on
the part of the Turks, until 1798, when Bonaparte, while on
his way to Egypt, planted the tricolor on the fortifications
of Malta, almost without resistance. The French conquest

(1) Some olden chronicles narrate that while PopeijAdrian VI. was celebrating Mass in SU
Peter’s on the Christmas of 1522 the day when the Turks took possession of Rhodes—
a stone in the cornice became detached and fell at his feet. Since all Rome was then trem-
bling for the fate of the island, this incident was regarded as a presage of its capture.

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of their mother-house and last stronghold was virtually the
death of the Knights-Hospitalers, although the order still
subsists — void of any military significance— as an aristocratic
organization, with its headquarters in Rome, devoted to
the furtherance of Catholic interests, and to the sanctification
of its members. We need make no more than an allusion
to the insolent claim of the Russian czars to a still persistent
grand-mastership of an “ Order of Malta,” a claim based on
the per se invalid renunciation of the last grand-master, the
German Ferdinand Yon Hompesch, in favor of the Schis-
matic autocrat, Paul I.

CHAPTER IX.

THE FABLE OF THE TWO-WIVED COUNT OF GLEICHEN.

When men began to perceive, during the first days of the so-
called Reformation, that the new dispensation was much
easier to live up to than the old, and that it knew very little of
sacrifice or mortification for the sake of God or for the good of
man, one of the first to appreciate this laxity was the Land-
grave, Philip of Hesse ; and we can imagine his gratitude tow-
ard the burly Doctor Martin, when that innovator, agreeing
with the gentle Melancthon, manifested no reluctance to pan-
der to the brutal passions of the powerful and wealthy. This
prince was anxious to repudiate his lawful spouse, and to
marry a more attractive woman. Not a shadow of a reason
could be alleged for the divorce, save the ordinary one of
disgust for the wife and an inclination toward' her rival. In
this emergency Philip applied for aid to Luther, who was
already, in many respects, the Protestant Pontiff*. One of
the chief objects of the Wittenberg revolutionist, and one
without the attainment of which his cause would have col-
lapsed, was to secure, not only the toleration of the civil power
for his sectarians, but the active co-operation of that power
in his heretical propaganda. Here was an opportunity not
to be ignored; and accordingly a formal authorization,

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THE FABLE OF THE TWO-WIVED COUNT OF GLEICHEN. 667

•signed by Luther and Mel&ucthon,was issued to the Land-
grave of Hesse, allowing him the delectable favor. And in
* order to silence the tongues of any possibly scandalizable
persons, the story was put forth that once upon a time the
Holy See had sanctioned a case of bigamy in favor of a
German noble. In the factum which Philip drew up for his
justification, we read that the Pope “ once allowed a Count
of Gleichen to have two wives at once ; he having married the
second in the Holy Land, being of belief that the first was
♦dead.”

This presumed fact, adduced by the Reforming Popes of
Germany to justify their flagrant and utterly shameless vio-
lation of divine and civil law, was not without effect upon the
common people. The popular version of the story, however,
indicated a more revolting state of affairs in the Gleichen
household than was narrated in the manifesto of the Land-
grave ; for, according to the vulgar acceptation, the Count
of Gleichen had married lady No. 2, knowing perfectly well
that No. 1 was living at that very time ; and the Pontiff not
only tolerated, but positively sanctioned, the simultaneous
bigamy. What a delicious morsel for the admiring and
credulous victims of Doctor Martin ; and how acceptable
to the historically brilliant yokels of our day, had not an
almost total oblivion been its lot ! Certainly it is wonderful
ihat no Protestant historical painter, no ambitious playwright
of the spectacular school (of course he should be of the class
which holds that theatric exigencies are superior to histori-
cal truth), has ever used this subject for his own profit, or
for the transient gratification of heresy, or, which would be
the more likely event, for the further mystification of ignor-
amuses. Strange! They have placed the Roman prelacy
upon the stage, to bless with melodious (operatic) chant the
daggers which are to inaugurate the Barthelemy ; and there
are scores of other instances of the dramatization of subjects
far less characterized by picturesque lies than is the Gleich-
en romance. And yet how effective would be the care-
ful representation of the scene where the Sovereign Pontiff
unites the Count to lady No. 2 ! The Pope is seated upon
his throne ; such a ceremony as this must be conducted with

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STUDIES m CHURCH HISTORY.

all possible dignity. The Head of the Church is about tc
give the lie to the Church past, present, and future. Such
an act is not to be consummated perfunctorily, or by the
intervention of ordinary bureaucracy. Those who by right
surround the Papal throne and a number of cardinals add
splendor to the scene. Now appears the fortunate - perhaps
unfortunate — Gleichen, leading by either hand his wife in re
and the wife in 8pe. Much care must be given to the expres-
sion of countenance worn by all these personages. The Pope*
must look like an incarnation of despair on the brink of helL
The artist or stage manager can allow much latitude of judg-
ment as to the looks of Gleichen, according as to whether
he deems the Count’s position a reward of virtue or a punish-
ment of sin. The dusky bride No. 2 must appear as sim-
plicity itself, if not as the essence of idiocy. As to the orig-
inal Countess of Gleichen, no actress should attempt to
portray her, no painter to depict her, if they cannot make
her countenance convey the idea that her soul is ever dom-
inated, at one and the same time, by sisterly love and grat-
itude toward No. 2, and by the most poignant jealousy and
hatred.

In a little church of Erfurt, in Thuringia, the officious
guide draws the attention of the tourist to a sepulchral slab,
bearing very rude carvings, but which at once challenges in-
terest by the nature of the artist’s subject A knight of tall
stature is represented as reposing between two women ; and
the guide — he is generally the sacristan — tells the signifi-
cance of the sculpture in something like the following words :
While warring under the Cross near Jerusalem, the Count of
Gleichen was taken prisoner. Falling to the lot of the sultan,
he was assigned to labor in the royal gardens, and here he
soon attracted the favorable notice of the sultan’s daughter.
Their acquaintance ripened into love on the part of the prin-
cess ; and she offered to become a Christian, to consummate
the captive’s liberation, and to accompany him to Europe,
provided he would marry her. This truly Christian knight
and pink of chivalry consented ; the escape was effected, the
pair betook themselves to Rome, and laid their case before
the Pope. A Protestant may imagine the quandary in which

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the Pontiff found himself ; a Catholic will fancy the impu-
dent fool politely escorted out of the papal presence. But
the story goes that the Pope decided that the Saracen girl,
who had risked so much on the faith of a Christian knight,
especially since she demanded baptism as well as marriage,
should not be disappointed. It has been suggested that this
complacent Pope was the very one who had been miraculous-
ly reproved for having refused a chance of repentance to the
supplicant Tanhauser, thus causing him, in his desperation,
to return to the feet of Venus, and thereby ensure his eter-
nal damnation. At any rate, Gleichen was permitted to have
two simultaneously legitimate wives, and started rejoicing
for Thuringia to introduce the ladies to each other. There
was not much anxiety in the breast of the Saracen claimant
to wifely honors, concerning her reception at Castle Gleich-
en ; born and raised amidst polygamy, she perceived noth-
ing unnatural in her matrimonial aspirations. But the mind
of her lord was terribly harassed as they neared the fast-
ness, where he knew his lawful lady was praying for his safe
return to his loving family. Strange to say, however, when
the transports of joy for the reunion were over, and the hus-
band had informed the wife of all his obligations to his
dusky companion, and had showed the papal dispensation,
there was no sign of rage, not even of displeasure, on the
part of the half-dethroned one. She took the newcomer^ to her
arms in all sisterly affection, assuring her that she regarded
their uxorious rights as equal. From that day the trio lived
in unity and peace.

Such is the popular Protestant tradition concerning the
two- wived Gleichen, and it requires but little perspicacity to
discern that it has originated from the necessity of explain-
ing, in some plausible way, the sculptured effigies on the
tomb at Erfurt. In 1887, in a session of the “Academic
des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres ” — a more appropriate
name for which would be “ Academie des Sciences Histori-
ques,” — one of the members, by no means a clerical, M.
Gaston Paris, read a paper on this subject ; and in it he said
that he found in the tombstone of Erfurt one of the numer-
ous examples of what is called iconographic mythology.

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Antiquarians universally admit that a vast number of le-
gends owe either their origin or their localization to a popu-
lar desire to explain works of art, the meaning of which has
been lost. Now, tjie tombstone at Erfurt bears no name ;
popular imagination (only that, and simply because the
Gleichens had a feudal establishment in the neighborhood, in
the olden time) assigned the sepulchre to some of that family.
And, of course, concluded the essentially accurate popular
mind, some Gleichen had two wives at the same time. But
how can we explain, most appositely demands M. Gaston
Paris, the erection of a monument in favor of bigamy in a Cath-
olic church ? “ Certainly the Pope must have authorized

it ; and to call forth such permission most extraordinary cir-
cumstances must have happened. The second wife must
have given life and liberty to the already married Gleichen.”
Then M. Paris shows how, by this same popular logic and
facility of producing indefinite sequences, the actuating scene
of the drama was naturally laid in the Orient ; the Crusades
were to the Middle Age very much what the Trojan war was
to the Greeks, above all others the Heroic Age. ^ “ The
troubles which these distant expeditions excited in family
life were especially adapted to upset every imagination.
•The various risks undergone by the returning warrior of the
Sepulchre gave rise to as many tales as did the deeds of the
conquerors of Ilium. Hence it is that we find, under forms
the most varied, this same pathetic theme of the return of
the husband at the very moment when the despondent wife
is about to yield to one of her suitors, — a theme which forms
the essential idea of the Odyssey , and which probably is
of far more ancient origin than the poem. Here the theme
is inverted.” Quite naturally, then, a Saracen lady becomes,
in the legend, the second wife of the Count of Gleichen ; and,
of course, as is always the case in mediaeval romances, where
a Christian knight is delivered by an Oriental lady, she is a
king’s daughter. ' Many used to imagine that they could
discern traces of a crown over the head of one of the femi-
nine figures on the Erfurt slab ; and in 1836, when the tomb
was displaced and the adjacent vault cleaned out, a physician
examined the skulls of the supposed Gleichen trio, with the

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THE CONTROVERSY ON THE CHINESE RITES.

671

result that he reported that the anatomical characteristics of
one of them proved it to have been that of an Eastern female.
But it was afterward shown that this enthusiast’s own report
did not really evince the sex of the subject. In contradic-
tion to the credulous physican’s absolute faith in the legend
consecrated by Luther and the Landgrave of Hesse, there
now came forth a scientist who, with an apparent show of
erudition, essayed to demonstrate that the Erfurt monument
was of no more ancient date than the fifteenth century, in-
stead of being of the thirteenth, the epoch of the much-mar-
ried knight’s supposed career; in fact, it seemed to be
proved that the disputed tomb was the last resting-place of
Count Sigismund Gleichen, who, toward the end of the
fifteenth century, brought from the East a Turkish woman,
introduced her into the castle indeed, but with whom he never
dreamed of entering into matrimony. However, it has been
finally demonstrated, as M. Gaston Paris proved to the
satisfaction of the French Academy in solemn session, that
the Erfurt sculpture represented Count Lambert II., who
died in 1227, who never went into the East, and who indeed
had possessed two wives, but not simultaneously.

Such, then, was the chief of the flimsy pretexts by which the
leader of the Reformers justified the permission given to
Philip of Hesse to repudiate Christina of Saxony, to whom
he had been united sixteen years, and who had borne him
eight children ; and to espouse Margaret von Saal, a maid of
honor to his sister Elizabeth.

CHAPTER X.

THE CONTROVERSY ON THE CHINESE RITES.

In the year 1645 the Sacred Congregation o^ the Propa-
ganda was requested to settle a controversy which had dis-
turbed the missionaries in China during several years, and
which, afterward agitated with a bitterness on both sides
which would have better befitted a less sacred cause, was of
great detriment to the propagation of the faith in the Celestial

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Empire, and productive of great scandal throughout Christen-
dom. From the day when the Jesuits resumed in China that
propagation of the Gospel which the sons of Sts. Dominic
and Francis had intermittently undertaken during the two
previous centuries, they had wisely and determinedly endeav-
ored to conciliate the apparently ineradicable prejudices of
those whose confidence was to be gained, ere the Christian
Faith could make conquest of their intelligences. It was in 1
accordance with this design that the Jesuits in China soon
discarded the simple costume and ostentatiously humble
manners of the native Bonzes — dress and demeanor which
nt first they had adopted. They soon donned silken robes,
used litters when travelling, and did many other things which
were appropriate for lettered persons, such as they undoubt-
edly were, and such as, for the sake of their mission, they
wished to be considered. With the same object in view, the
Jesuit missionaries allowed their neophytes to continue the
practice of certain ceremonies which they would have pref-
erably abolished, but which they regarded as capable of other
than an anti-Christian interpretation, and to which the deni-
zens of the Middle Kingdom were invincibly attached. Thus,
the Jesuit superior, Ricci of Macerata, had convinced him-
self that there was not necessarily anything idolatrous or
even superstitious in the prostrations and sacrifices which
the Chinese offered to the shades of their ancestors ; that,
in fine, these ceremonies were not those of worship, prop-
erly speaking, but rather demonstrations of filial devotion.
Nor can it be said that in forming this conclusion, the wish
of Ricci was the father of the thought ; for he believed that
the doctrine of Confucius on the nature of God — a doctrine
on which depended the permissibility of the rites in ques-
tion— was not different from that which Christianity presented.
Ricci contended that the Chinese sage had not asked his
disciples to adore merely the visible Jieavens ; the Jesuit
fancied that the Confucian utterances indicated the Lord of
Heaven, the True God, as the supreme object of human
homage. Most of the Jesuits in China adopted the views of
their superior ; but in the course of time the Dominicans
insisted that no Christian evangelist could hold such opin-

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THE CONTROVERSY ON THE CHINESE RITE& 673

ions. The Preaching Friars discerned atheism in the teach-
ings of Confucius ; they declared that the sage recognized
only a material heaven, and not a pure spirit who is the
Creator of the Universe.

The Dominicans having formulated their complaints at
the Propaganda in 1645, the Sacred Congregation prohibit-
ed the Chinese ceremonies in question, until the Holy See
should pronounce a definitive sentence ; but in 1656, the Jes-
uits having presented evidence which apparently favored
their opinion of the criminated practices, the Congregation
issued another decree tolerating said ceremonies as purely
civil and political. The dispute waxed warmer ; and in 1669
and 1674 the question was again debated at Rome. The
opponents of the Chinese Rites were now reinforced by the
suffrages of all the missionaries whom the Seminary for For-
eign Missions, that celebrated monument of French zeal for
Teligion which had been recently established in Paris, had
sent into China. ' In 1693, Maigrot, bishop of Conon and
vicar-apostolic of Fo-Kien, issued a pastoral in which he
ordered his clergy, firstly, to use the words Tien-cliu , “ Lord
of Heaven,” when they wished to convey the idea of God to
the Chinese ; in the same circumstances the words Tien and
Xamti, “ Heaven ” and “ Emperor,” were never to be used.
The prelate ordered, secondly, that there should be allowed in
the churches no tablet bearing the inscription, King-Tien ,
M Adore Heaven.” Thirdly, enjoined the bishop, the Chi-
nese Christians could not be permitted to assist at the semi-
annual oblations made to Confucius and to the dead. Mai-
grot also stigmatized as false in many points the explanation
given by the Jesuits to Pope Alexander VII., and which had
procured the tolerating decree of 1656. The bishop praised
those missionaries who had already prohibited the tablets
just mentioned; and he condemned several propositions,
bearing on the matter in agitation, which had been ad-
vanced by certain Jesuit writers. This pastoral of the vicar-
apostolic of Fo-Kien caused great excitement ; and the Jes-
uits upbraided the bishop “ for having presumed to decide, by
his sole authority,” a question which the Holy See, as they
.contended, regarded as debatable. Of the six bishops then

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forming the Chinese hierarchy, only two upheld the Jesuit
position ; against it were ranged, besides four bishops, all
the Dominicans and Franciscans, and all the secular priests
from the Seminary for Foreign Missions. A new element
now entered into the controversy. Most of the missionaries
being then, just as they are in our day, from the Land of the
Lilies, it was quite natural that the Sorbonne, as yet a pow-
erful factor in all things Catholic, should participate in the
dispute. On Oct. 18, 1700, the still justly revered Faculty
condemned several propositions which a Jesuit author in
Europe had advanced in favor of the views held by his breth-
ren in China. Such was the condition of things when Pope
Innocent XLL appointed a special Congregation to consider
the nature of the Chinese Rites ; and perhaps superficiality
would not have been predicated of him who would have then
declared that apparently charity had become a stranger in the
hearts of all who were debating the matter. In the words
of one of the most judicially-minded polemics who have
commented on this melancholy subject, “ In these dis-
cussions there were most regrettable animosities. Some
bitter foes of the Jesuits painted their conduct in the
darkest colors, exaggerating their faults, and accusing them
of idolatry ; whereas at most, they might have been charged
.with excessive tenderness, human prudence, or laxity. But
the Jesuits, on their side, imagined that they were right in
reality, because their adversaries were apparently wrong ;
and they clung the more to their opinion, because they saw
that many combatted it through passion, and without under-
standing it. An effect of extreme injustice is to embitter,
and to disgust ; and this fact seems to explain the long re-
sistance of the Jesuits. Undoubtedly we do not yearn to
discover culpability in a body of men whom we esteem ; but
facts do depose against many of the Society. We have al-
• ready recorded the results of our researches in this matter ;
and we have received many protests, urging us to read the
apologies written by certain members of the Society. How-
ever, those apologies do not seem to us as excusing entirely
the faults of the missionaries, of whom we have spoken.
The Memoirs of Father d’Avrigny and the collection of

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THE CONTROVERSY ON THE CHINESE RITES.

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Edifying Letters , rather furnish testimony against them ” (1).

On April 18, 1705, Mgr. de Tournon, titular patriarch of
Antioch, who had been papal legate in India, arrived in China
with the usual legatine faculties. This envoy of the Holy
See had already experienced trouble with the Jesuit mis-
sionaries in India, because of the Rites of Malabar (2) ;
therefore he was well fitted to cope with the difficulties of
his Chinese legation. In September he was received in
solemn audience by the emperor ; but having notified His
Majesty that the Holy See had condemned the practices
which the Jesuits tolerated, he was ordered to leave the
empire. Speaking of this episode, Picot says : “ In his
narrative of this embassy, Father d’ Avrigny gives no exalted
idea of the moderation or intelligence of Mgr. de Tournon,
nor any similar appreciation of the qualifications of Mgr.
Maigrot, the bishop of Conon and vicar-apostolic. However,
this writer appears to aim only at a justification of such of
his brethren as favored the Chinese Rites. One would
imagine that he counted as nothing the sentiments of other
missionaries, the authority of the papal legate, and the ex-
press decisions of the Holy See. These last decisions alone
ought to have restrained a religious who, on all other occa-
sions, professes a legitimate respect and a laudable zeal for
the apostolic judgments. ... In two letters written at this
time by the legate to Mgr. Maigrot and to the Jesuits of
Pekin, he upbraids those religious most strongly for having
abused the favor of the emperor in order to nullify the pur-

(1) Picot ; Memoirs to Serve for the Ecclesiastical History of the Eighteenth Cen-
tury,, Vol. i., p. 213. Paris. 1853.

(2) When the patriarch arrived in Pondicherry in 1703. he found that the Capuchins,
Dominicans, and seculars complained that the Jesuits tolerated several idolatrous practices
on the part of their converts. The charges were based on the fact that the neophytes were
allowed to retain Images which resembled idolsf and that such of them as were musicians
were permitted to play at the feasts of the idolaters. The Jesuits were also charged with
neglecting the despised Pariahs ; with omitting some of the ceremonies of baptism ; with
deferring the baptism of infants ; with performing the marriage ceremony for children
who were only six years of age ; with allowing baths which were taken merely for luxury ;
with practicing superstitious and even Immodest rites at nuptials ; and with several other
things of lesser moment.- After an examination which lasted six months, the legate issued
a pastoral, condemning these usages. The Jesuits sent deputies to Rome, asking to be
allowed to follow such usages of the Indians as were in themselves Indifferent, and such
as the missionaries had rendered Innocuous by elimination of everything baneful ; alleging
the invincible attachment of the Indians to their customs. Nevertheless, on Jan. 7, 1708,
the Holy Inquisition commanded that the pastoral of the legate should be observed. Pope

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pose of the Pope’s representative ” (1). Having received his
dismissal at the imperial hands, the patriarch proceeded to
Nankin, where he issued a decree condemnatory of the
Chinese Bites, and announced that on Nov. 20, 1704, the
Supreme Pontiff had ordered the missionaries to observe the
rules given by Mgr. Maigrot in 1693. The Jesuits ignored
the legatine prescriptions ; most of them, and a few of the
other missionaries, had already promised the emperor to
continue the honors to Confucius, and never to return to
Europe, thus entitling themselves to an imperial rescript
which accorded them the freedom of the empire. All who
obeyed the legate, that is, all of the secular clergy, and the
greater part of the Dominicans fcnd Franciscans, were
banished ; but many of these confessors succeeded in elud-
ing the imperial police, apd continued to perform their
apostolic work in the manner prescribed by the Head of the
Church. Twenty-two Jesuits signed an appeal to the Pope,
dated May 28, 1707, in which they sought to justify their
fcompliance with the imperial wishes by the dangers which
a refusal would have entailed on the missions. In the mean-
time Mgr. de Tournon had been arrested at Nankin, conduct-
ed to Macao (a Portuguese possession), and placed in the
hands of the Portuguese authorities, who were requested to
allow him to have no communication with the Chinese empire.
The Portuguese officials were hostile to the patriarch ; for
while he was in Lisbon, on his way to the Orient, he had
memorialized His Most Faithful Majesty concerning the
rapacity and generally un-Christian conduct of the royal
representatives in the East Quite naturally, therefore, tfie
legate was thrown into prison, and was furthermore treated

Clement XI. was obliged to renew this order several times, so determined were the Jesuits,
especially as they were sustained by two of the Indo-Portuguese bishops, to continue the
obnoxious practices. However, one of the J esu its, V isdelou, whom Tournon bad appointed
bishop of Claudiopolis, differed radically from bis brethren in this matter ; and he obeyed
the pontifical injunction to use every means to secure obedience to the legate's orders.
The practices were still continued ; again they were condemned by Benedict XIII. in 1727 ;
by Clement XII. in 1739; by Benedict XIV. in 1744. It is well to note that Benedict XIV.
solved the tremendous difficulty concerning ministrations to the despised Pariahs— a dif-
ficulty derived from the system of caste which allowed no Hindoo of another class to com-
municate in any way with one who bad communicated with those outcasts— by ordering
that certain priests should be designated for their special and exclusive service.

(1) Ubi supra.

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677

with the utmost cruelty. Pope Clement XI. replied to the
appeal of the Jesuits by enrolling his legate in the Sacred Col-
lege ; but when the biretta reached the prelate, he was dying,
and Father Carre, the bearer of the insignia, enjoyed the
greater honor of administering the last Sacraments to him (1).
The apologists of the recalcitrant missionaries are fond of
dilating on the alleged “ imprudences ” of Cardinal deTour-
non ; indiscretions or worse, according to these apologists,
which entailed all his suffering and his premature death.
Thus, Francesco Pellico, the Jesuit brother of the renowned
Silvio, tells us that the legate “ did not conduct himself with
that prudence ” which befitted the circumstances, and that
therefore “ he experienced many tribulations ” (2). The sole v
“ imprudence” of the patriarch was his obedience to the pon-
tifical commands — a deference which should have extorted,
the admiration of Father Pellico, who could be very eloquent
when he undertook to extol the obedience of his brethren
to their general. Cr^tineau-Joly, the most ultra among the
apologists of the Society, insinuates that when the patriarch
refused to obey the imperial command to tolerate the Chinese
Rites, he “ outraged ” the proper independence and dignity
of the monarch ; and the same Cretineau- Joly , defending the
Jesuits against the Jansenistic calumny which asserted that
they “ were the real murderers of the cardinal ” (3), compla-
cently adduces the “ neutrality ” observed by the Jesuits in
the contest between the papal representative and the Chinese
sovereign (4). Such desperate attempts at extenuation will

(1) Not the least amusing among tbe innumerable audacities of Voltaire, since all France-
knew the history of Mgr. de Tournon well, was his representation of the prelate as an ad-
venturer, “ a Savoyard priest named Maillard. who assumed the name of Tournon.” The
patriarch was born in Turin, and was the second son of Victor Amadeus Maillard, Count of
Tournon and Marquis of Alby. His ecclesiastical studies were made in the College of the
Propaganda in Rome ; and his body, brought by the vicar-apostolic, Mezzabarha was in-
terred In the sepulchral vaults of that institution.

( 2 ) Thus in the open letter entitled Francesco Pellico , of the Society of Jesus , to Vin-
cenzo Gioberti, p- 183. Genoa, 1845. This work, written in reply to the Prologomeni of
Giobertl, and especially as a refutation of that philosopher's charges against the 8ociety
(accusations which were mild, if compared with the venom contained in' the posterior
Modem Jesuit ), bears this epigraph at the beginning of the volume : “ Insimulari qui~
vis innocais potest ; revtnei nisi nocens non potest ”

(3) This absurd charge was formulated by Coudrette, in bis General History of the
Birth of the Society of Jesus, Vol. 11., p. 285. Paris, 1760.

(4) “ Kang-Hi n'Hait pas habitui a voir douter de sa parole et de son autoriU. il
ne tolirait la contradiction que peer passetemps ; die venait id sous la forme pun
outrage ; U bannit de son empire Maigrot, vicaire apostolique , et il ordonna de liv -

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

scarcely be endorsed by the Jesuits of our day. But we
would draw the attention of the reader to the judgment
which Pope Clement XI. delivered when he announced the
death of his legate to the Sacred College : “We have lost
a most zealous friend of true religion; an intrepid defender
of the pontifical authority ; a valiant vindicator of ecclesiasti-
cal discipline ; a great luminary and ornament of your
College. We ourselves have lost a son, your brother, who
was exhausted by the many labors which he performed for
the cause of Christ ; who was crushed by the daily sufferings
which afflicted him ; who, like gold, was purified in a crucible
— a crucible of innumerable insults which he endured with
great strength of soul . . . . We are bidden to hope by that
unconquerable constancy, because of which this truly apos-
tolic man, although fed by the bread of tribulation and the
water of anguish, never failed in his duty ; and because of
which he withstood imprisonment and other grievous in-
juries bravely until the last moment of his life. He fought
a good fight ; he kept the faith'" (1). Pope Clement XL
would scarcely have pronounced, in full Consistory, such a
eulogy on a prelate whose character was familiar to all the
cardinals, had the subject been of that calibre which has
been assigned to him by the defenders of the Chinese Kites.
Before we bid farewell to Cardinal de Tournon, we would
note that one of the best sources of information concerning
him is the Capuchin, Pierre Parisot, known in religion as
Father Norbert, whose Historical Memoirs on the Missions
in the Hast Indies , Presented to the Supreme Pontiff, Bene-
dict XIV., were praised by that perspicacious Pope, and were

rev aux Portuguais le Legal du Saint-Siege. . . . Lex Jixuitex rexterent neulrcs dang
ccttc eirconsta nee . ... Tlx n'twrent pax xr porter mvdiatcurx c litre Ic monarque et le
Legal.” Cretinkau-Joly ; Religious , Political, and Literary History of the Society
of Jesus , Vol. v., ch. 1. Paris, 1846.

(1) “ Amisimus orthodoxaa rcligionis zelatorcm maximum; pontificicc auctoritatis
intrepidum defensor cm ; ccclcxiasttcce disciplinev asxertorem fottissimum ; magnum
Ordinis vestri lumen et nmamentum. Amisimus filium nostrum fratrem vestrum.
plurimis quos pro Christi causa susccpit , laborihus attritum ; diuturnis, quos pertulU
c&rumnis confectum ; contumcliis , quas forti magnoque animo sustinuit innumeris ,
velut aurum, in fomace probatum. . .. S pc rare nos demum jubet invicta ilia sacer-
dotalis roboris constantia , qua vir vere apoxtolieus , tametsi sustentarctur pane trib-
ulationix et aqua angusticc , offieium tamcn xuum numepiam dimisit ; ac non minus
diutumee cuxtodicc injuriis, quam aliis gravisximix vexationibus ad mpremum usqtie
pitw 8piritum fort-iter toleratis , honum certamen certavit , cursum consummavit ,
fidem strvavtt .” Norbert ; Memoirs , Vol. ii., p. 6. Paris, 1742.

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formally approved by Fra Carlo Maria da Perugia, Quali-
ficator of the Holy Office, and Consultor of the Congregation of
the Index. The defenders of the Chinese Bites endeavored to
nullify the effect of this work by decrying the character of its
author; but with small success. Another authority for the
learning, zeal, and prudence of Cardinal de Tournon is one that
cannot be decried. The celebrated Cardinal Passionei, than
whom no man was better versed in the diplomatic, theologi-
cal, and literary history of the seventeenth and the early
part of the eighteenth centuries ; and to whose judgment
the critical Pope Benedict XIY. habitually deferred ; gives full
evidence that the legate possessed in an eminent degree the
virtues and talents which his opponents refused to discern
in him (1).

Pope Clement XI. now gave to the world the decree which
he had signed in 1704, and in virtue of which his legate had
acted. Accompanying the pontifical mandate which was
sent to all the superiors-general of the various institutes rep-
resented among the missionaries in China, were strict orders
to each of those superiors to enforce obedience to the Papal
prescriptions. Among the generals who promised to re-
spect the commands of the Yicar of Christ, was Tamburini
of the Jesuits ; and on Nov. 20, 1710, in the presence of his
assistants and of the deputies of the various provinces then
assembled in the Eternal City, this head of the Society de-
clared that he would not recognize as a Jesuit any one who
would thereafter defend the permissibility of the criminated
Chinese Bites. Why was this declaration of their general ig-
nored by the immense majority of the Jesuits who were la-
boring in China ? We must reply with Picot, that this matter
is one of the things which we cannot undertake to explain.
Father d’Avrigny vainly endeavors to excuse his recalcitrant
brethren by a use of the same arguments which were adduced
by those J ansenists whom his Society so zealously and bril-
liantly refuted. “ These traits, and many others,” remarks
Picot, “ are too similar to those manifested by mere partisans
(and by all heresiarchs) ; and they are not redolent of that

(1) Passionei ; Historical Memoirs Concerning the Legation and Death of Cardi -
,nal dc Tournon. Rome. 1762.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

frank submission which Father d’Avrigny demands from
others when different matters are involved — a submission, an
example of which he should have given ” (1). On March 19,
1715, Clement XL, issued his Bull Ex ilia die, in which he
stated that the decree of the pontifical legate ought to have
put an end to all the dissensions concerning the Chinese Rites ;
but that the defenders of the ceremonies had refused to aban-
don them, under various pretexts, and chiefly relying on a
misinterpretation of the decree of Pope Alexander VII.
The Pontiff reminded the Christian world how Pope Inno-
cent XII. had instituted a commission of theologians, among
whom was the vicar-apostolic of Hon-Quang, then just re-
turned to Europe, for an examination of the questions which
the Jesuits had presented in regard to the pastoral of Mgr.
Maigrot. This examination, observes the Pontiff, lasted dur-
ing several years ; and finally, in 1704, the condemnation of the
ceremonies was issued by himself (Clement XI.), the legate
in China being ordered to see that the decree was observed.
On Sept. 25, 1710, continued the Pope, the Holy See con-
firmed the decree which, in accordance with the pontifical
desire, Mgr. de Tournon, had promulgated on Jan. 25, 1707 ;
and nevertheless, laments the Head of the Church, very
many of the missionaries were still disobedient. In con-
clusion, therefore, in order to obviate every possible subter-
fuge in the future, the Pope ordered that each missionary
in China should subscribe, under oath, to a formula which he
would receive ; and from the moment that he received that
formula until the same should have been signed, no mission-
ary should presume to exercise his priestly functions.
Most of the recalcitrants yielded to this pressure ; and in
1720, the Holy See despatched another legate to China who
was to relieve the unfortunates from the censures which
they had incurred. The chosen prelate was Charles Am-
brose Mezzabarba, a referendary of the Segnatura, who
was now raised to the dignity of patriarch of Alexandria (2).
On his arrival in China, many of the Jesuits applied for

(1) Loc. cit.% p. 279.

(2) Plcot speaks of Mezzabarba as patriarch of Antioch ; but all the contemporary dooc-
uments ascribe Alexandria as the source of bis titular dignity^

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THE CONTROVEBSY ON THE CHINESE RITES. 681

absolution from their censures ; so also did the bishop of
Macao, who had incurred excommunication by his com-
plicity in the iniquitous treatment of the late legate.

After some difficulty, Mezzabarba obtained an audience
with the Chinese sovereign ; but he found that Kang-Hi had
determined to meet the papal resolution with a decree ban-
ishing all Christians from his dominions. Under the very
eyes of the legate, many were arrested ; and the persecution
was suspended only when Mezzabarba had promised to re-
turn to Europe without exercising any more acts of jurisdic-
tion. The details of this embassy are given in the narrative
published in Milan in 1739 by Viano, a Servite who had
accompanied Mezzabarba. Much of Viano’s account is in-
credible ; we therefore decline to receive his assertion that
the Jesuits had poisoned the mind of Kang-Hi against the
legate, filling it with apprehensions lest the upholders of
the pontifical decrees should prove to be rebels to the civil
authority of the emperor. Mezzabarba returned to Macao ;
and on Nov. 4, 1721, a few days before his departure for
Europe, he issued an address to the missionaries, exhorting
them to persevere in fidelity to the commands of the Holy
See. He declared that although it was not his intention to
derogate, in any way, from the force of the Bull Ex ilia die ,
nevertheless, love of peace persuaded him to yield tempo-
rarily so far as to grant certain “ permissions ” in the mat-
ter of the Chinese Rites. However, added the legate, these
“ permissions ” were not to be made known to the neophytes,
nor even to be translated into the Chinese or Tartar lan-
guage, under pain of excommunication, lata senteniia; these
“ permissions ” could be used at the discretion of each mis-
sionary, according as contingencies might demand. In fine,
Mezzabarba insisted that the general tenor of the pontifical
prohibitions was to be held as inviolable. We note the “ per-
missions ” as they were afterward recorded in the Constitu-
tion Ex quo singulari , issued by Benedict XIY. on Aug. 9,
1742. I. It was allowed to the Chinese Christians to have
in their domiciles the customary “ tablets of the dead, ” in-
scribed merely with the name of the deceased ; but on con-
dition that all superstition and every danger of scandal were

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

avoided. IL Permission was given for ceremonies referring
to the dead, when those ceremonies were purely civil, and
therefore free from any suspicion of superstition. III. A
purely civil respect was tolerated for the memory of Confu-
cius ; candles, eatables, etc., could be placed in front of his
tablets. IV. Candles, incense, etc., could be used at funerals,
and offered for the funeral expenses, if no superstition was
intended. V. Prostrations of respect were allowed before
the tablets, biers, and corpses. VI. It was permitted to
place food at the side of a bier, if respect for the dead was
the sole object of the act. VII. The prostration Ko teu be-
fore a tablet, especially on the Chinese feast of the New Year,
was allowed VIII. As in the case of biers and graves, so
candles and incense could be used before tablets which were
not redolent of superstition. These “ permissions, ” as we
have observed, were not to be made known indiscriminately
to the neophytes, lest in their simplicity those converts might
form an idea that all the Chinese ceremonies were laudable ;
nay, the “ permissions ” could not be communicated to others
than missionaries — aut cuiquam qui missionaries non esset
earn palam faceret .” But in defiance of this explicit pro-
hibition, the bishop of Pekin, a Jesuit, availed himself of the
concessions to convey the impression that they manifested
the mind of the Holy See in regard to the entire matter of
the Chinese Kites ; that, in fine, they equivalently proclaimed
that the rebellious course of the Jesuits had been approved
by the representative of the Koman Pontiff. The prelate of
Pekin even dared to emit two pastorals, dated July 6, and
Dec. 23, 1723, in which he enjoined on his clergy, under pain
of suspension ipso facto, to interpret the Bull Ex ilia die as
fully explained by the “permissions.” These pastorals
were condemned by Clement XII. in 1735.

According to the Continuators of Alexandre’s Ecclesiastical
History , in their day there were preserved in the Archives of
the Propaganda documents which showed that on Aug. 29,
1723, Pope Innocent XIII. sent for Tamburini, the general
of the Jesuits, and after expressing his indignation because
of the persistent disobedience of the members of the Society
who were laboring in China, told the general that the Sec-

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THE CONTROVERSY ON THE CHINESE RITES.

683

xetary of State would inform him as to what His Holiness
required of him. Pursuing their narrative, the Cpntinuators
rsay that when Tamburini waited on the Secretary, he learned
that if he wished the Society to exist any longer, he should
promise as follows : L All the Jesuits would reverently
observe the provisions of the -Clementine Constitution Ex
ilia die . II. If any of the Jesuits should refuse this submis-
sion, he would immediately summon them to Home. III.
Within three years the Holy See was to receive authentic
proof of the persevering obedience of the Jesuit missionaries
to the papal commands. IV. From that day no new mem-
bers were to be received into the Society. Y. No more
Jesuits, and no more seculars who would join the Society
upon their arrival in China, could be sent to the Chinese
missions. VI. The Jesuits then in China were to be ordered
to remain at their posts ; but they were to perform no
missionary work until further orders from the Holy See
reached them. VII. The general was to revoke the faculties
possessed by certain inferior officers of the Society, whereby
they were empowered to send members to the Orient. VIII.
Since it was well known that the Jesuits of Pekin had pro-
cured the imprisonment of certain missionaries, the general
would try to effect the liberation of those missionaries. IX.
The general would warn all his subjects never again to dare
to disregard the Constitutions emitted by the Apostolic See.
X. Father Nicholas Giampriamo would never leave Rome
without the permission of the Pope. The Continuators say
that Tamburini signed a promise to observe these injunctions,
and that the document was countersigned by his assistants,
on Sept. 13^1723 (1). But whether or not this testimony of
the Continuators of Alexandre be true, it is certain that Popes
Benedict XIII. and Clement XII. found no less obstinacy in
the recalcitrant Jesuits than their predecessors had exper-
ienced since the beginning of the controversy. When Clem-
ent XII. condemned the pastoral of the bishop of Pekin, m
announced that he reserved to the Apostolic See the right to
determine the true significance of the “ permissions ” accord-

(1) Supplement fo the Eeelesia*tieal llixtory of Noel Alexandre , pt. 2, Dlss. 4.
Bingen, 1791 .

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

ed by the papal legate, Mezzabarba— “ permissions ” which
the rebellious missionaries still adduced in justification of
their audacity. . Death prevented Clement XII. from accom-
plishing his design ; but on July 11, 1742, Benedict XIY.
promulgated his Constitution Ex quo singulari , in which,
after a detailed narrative of all that his immediate prede-
cessors had effected, and all else that they had attempted,
in the matter of the Chinese Bites, he declared that when
the patriarch of Alexandria granted the ‘ : permissions ”
which had been so impudently abused, the said legate of the
Apostolic See merely used “ a sort of. economy which was
necessary in the circumstances, and which he would have
abandoned, had he been able to discuss the matter with
learned men who were zealous for the purity of Christian
worship, and who were faithful to the Apostolic decisions.”
Then referring to the bishop of Pekin, the Pontiff solemnly
reprobated that prelate’s interpretation of the “ permissions ”
— an interpretation which indicated that the position assumed
by the recalcitrants was justifiable (1). Finally, His Holiness
pronounced the “ permissions ” superstitious ; and declared

(1) We give the text of this passage: “ Quum autem patriarcha Alexondrinus in
prmallata pastorali mentem warn satis prudcnter explicuisset, nimirum pastoralis
sum cpistolm not ilia opus non esse ad promovendum in neophytis erga pontificia de-
er eta veneratUmtm et observantiam , quum satis esset uljuxta Constitution is Ponti-
ficia mandata in via salutis dirigerentur ; privterea quum omnibus interdictum vol-
uisset , sub poena quoque excommunicationis latm sententim , ne quis Ulam in Sinensium
aut Tartaricum sermonem verteret, aut cuiquam qui missionarius non esset earn
palam faceret ; de permissionibus autem quum statuisset non nisi caute , et ubi tantum
utilitasvel necessiias id postularet, esse evulgandas ; profecto omnis , ad quern pas-
toralis ilia epistola dirigebatur , ex tali procedcndi modo baud obscure inferre debebat
quantis ills animi angustiis obsessus , et quam anceps et perplexus in permissionibus
hujusmodi proponendis extitisset ; adeo ut ceconomia quadam usus fuisset ad loci et
temporis circumstantias prorsus nccessaria; aqua putandum est cum reccssurum
fuissc, si libertas sibi data esset rem discut iendi cum episcopis aliisque doctis viris qui
nihil aliud quam Christiani cult us puritatem, et Apostoltca Constitutionis obser-
vantiam ante oculos haberent. At permissiones Him contra expressam adeo patri-
arch ce ipsius voluntatem emdgatm, et quod mirum , Pekini episcopus per binas suas
pastorales mandavit , sub pcena suspension is ipso facto incuirendcB, universis dioccesis
sum missinnariis ut observarent et observari prmciperent , ConstUxUioncm Ex Hla Dei
Juxta permissiones quas ipse conte ndebat ad sa potissimum referri qua in prmcitata
Constitutions fuerat solemniter interdicta ; prmcepit insuper ut Christi fldeles quater
singulis annis in diebus omnium celeberrimis distincte ifistruerentur quum t« Us qua
a patriarcha Alexandrini pastor ali permittuntur. Clemens Papa XII., prcedectssar
n outer, tarn audax episcopi Pekinensis factum rnquo animo ferre baud potens, muneri
suo maxime interesse binas Was epistolas damnare, ac penitus reprobare , Apostolicm
Brevi quod anno 1735 promulgavit .”

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' THE CONTROVERSY ON THE CHINESE RITES. 685

■that they “ should be as though they never had been ” (1).
The intimation of punishment for the refractory is as follows :

“ If any of the regular missionaries of the Society of Jesus, or
of any other order, congregation, or institute, refuse — which
God forbid ! — exact, full, absolute, inviolable, and strict obe-
dience to all that which is prescribed in this Constitution, we
command their superiors, both provincial and general, and
in virtue of holy obedience, to remove such contumacious and
reprobate men from the missions without delay, to call them
to Europe, and to inform us of the fact, so that we may punish
them according to the degree of their crime. If any of the
aforesaid provincial or general superiors do not obey this our
•command, or are slow in obeying it, we shall not hesitate in
proceeding also against them, even, among other punish-
ments, depriving them forever of the privilege or faculty of
.sending any members of their order to the missions ” (2). We

(1) " Nolentes itaque quemquam ad Constitutionem iiwam summo Christiana re-
ligionis damno malitiose evertendam permissionibus ejusmodi uti, dcHnimus ac de-
claramus prcefatas permissions ita esse habendas ac sinumquam extitissent , earum-
que praxim tamquam super stitiosam omnino damnamus el exsecramur

(2) ** Ex prcedictorum Sanctce Romance Ecclcsice cardinalium consilio, motu
quoque propria, ac certa scientia , maturaque deliberatione , turn etiam de plenitudine
Apostolicm potestatis% Constitutionis prcesentis tenore , in virtute sanctce obedientice
prcecipimus et expresse mandamus omnibus et singulis archiepiscopis et episcopis in
Sinarum imperio aliisque regnis sive finitimis sive adjaccntibus nunc existentibus ,
aut olim pro tempore futuris% sub pcenis suspensions a pontificalium exercitio% et ab
ecclesice ingressu interdict i, eorum vero officialibus et vicariis in spiritulibus general -
ibvs, aliisque eorumdem locorum ordinariis vicariis, turn etiam eoium provicariis ,

.et insuper missionariis universis tarn scecularibus quam regularibus , cujuscumque
ordinis, congregations , institute etiam Societatis Jesu , sub poenis privationis
quarumcumque quibus gaudent facultatum , et suspension is ab exercitUf cures anima-
runu, turn etiam suspensions a divinis ipso facto incurr endec absque alia declarations,
demum excommunicationis lata sentential , a qua nonpossint nisi a nobis et a Romano
Pontifice pro tempore existente absblvU prater quam inarticido mortis constitute ~
addita quoad regulares etiam vocis actives et passives privationis peena , prcecipimus

et districts mandamus ut omnia et singula quee in hoc nostra Constitutions continen-
tur, exacts , integre, absolute % inviolabiliter , atque immobiliter, non modo i})si obser-
vent, sed etiam omni conatu ac studio ea ipsa observari curent a singulis et universis
qui quoquomodo ad eorum curam ft regimen spectant ; nec colore , causa, occasions ,
seu preetextu aliquo huic nostree ConstitutUmi ulla in parte contraire aut adversary
audeant vel prassumant. Prasterea quoad missionarios regulares cujuscumque ordinis
congregation is, institute ac Societatis quoque Jesu , si quis eorum ( quod Dcus avertat ! )
exactam integram , absolutam, inviolabilem, strictamque obedienttam denegaverit iis
quex a nobis prcesentis hujus Constitutionis tenore statuunturacprcecipiuntur , eorum
superioribus tarn provincialibus quam generalibus in virtute sanctce obedientice ex-
presse mandamus . ut homines hujusmodi contumaces , perditos , ac refract arios a mis -
sionibus absque ulla more dimoveant, eosque in Europam statim revocent , ac de iUis
notitiam nobis exhibeant, ut reos pro gravitate criminis punire valeamus. Quod si
prczdicti 8uperiores provinciates aut generates huic nostro prcecepto minus obtemper-

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

subjoin the form of the oath which, in accordance with this
Constitution of Pope Benedict XIV., each missionary in China
was ordered to take, ere he could exercise his functions : “ I,
N., a missionary sent to China by the Apostolic See or by my
superiors in accordance with the faculties given to them by the
same Apostolic See, have clearly understood and shall fully
and faithfully obey the mandate of the Holy See concerning
the Chinese Bites, which is contained in the Constitution of
Pope Clement XI. which treats of that matter, and which is
prescribed in the formula of this present oath. I shall ob-
serve it exactly, absolutely, and inviolably ; fulfilling its in-
junctions without any tergiversation ; and I shall strive with
all my power to induce the same obedience on the part of all
the Chinese Christians whose spiritual direction may be com-
mitted to my care. Furthermore, if I can prevent them, I
shall never allow the Chinese Christians to avail themselves
of the ‘ permissions ’ which were accorded at Macao on Nov.
4, 1721, in the pastoral letter of the patriarch of Alexandria*
and which have been condemned by our Most Holy Pontiff,
Pope Benedict XIV. And if I should ever fail in this prom-
ise (which God forbid !), I shall proclaim myself, on each
occasion of such failure, as subject to all the penalties imposed
in the aforesaid Constitutions. Thus I promise, vow, and
swear on the Gospels of God ” (1). The majority of the
hitherto refractory Jesuits now yielded to the exhortations
and menaces of the Vicar of Christ ; and in a few years the

avcrint. aut in eo derides fuerint , nos contra ipsos quoque procedure non recusa-
bimus . atque inter eastern mittendi aliquem ex ipsorum ordine in earum regionum
missiones privilegio sen facilitate cm perpetuo privabimius."

(1) “ Ego. N.. missionarius ad Sinas (vel ad regnum N.) . a Sede Apostolica vel a
8vpcnoribu8 meis juxta facilitates eis a Sede Apostolica concessas missus vel destinatus
prceccpto ac mandato Apostolico super ritibus ac ceremoniis Sinenribus in Constitu-
tions Clementis Papas XI. hoc de re edita . qua preesentis juramenti formula
preescripta cst con ten to, ac mihi per integram ejusdem Constitution is Iccturam ap-
prime voto plene ac fideliter parebo ; illudque exacts, absolute, ac inviolabiliter
observabo. et absque ulla tergiversatione adimplcbo ; atque pro virili enitar ut a
Christianis Sinensibus. quorum spiritualem directionem quoquomodo me habere con-
tigerit. rimilis obedientia preestetur. Ac insuper. quantum in me est. numquam pat -
iar ut ritus et ceremonies Sinenses in Uteris pastoralibus Patriarchs Alexandrini
Macai datis die IV. Novembris. 1721, permittee, ac a Sanctisrimo Domino Nostro
Benedicto Papa XIV. damnatce. ab eisdem Christianis ad praxim deducantur. Si
a utem (quod Dens averted) quoquomodo contravenerim . toties quoties id evenerit,
pasnis per prcedictas Const itutiones impositis me subjectum agnosco et declaro-
It a tactis Emngeliis promittn. voveo. et jura. Sic me Deus adjunct, et hcecsanc-
tisrima Dei Evangelia. Ego. N.. manu propria. ”

Digitized by LjOOQle

THE CONTROVERSY ON THE CHINESE RITES.

687

Controversy on tlie Chinese Rites was happily relegated to-
the domain of Ecclesiastical History.

DEO OMNIPOTENT!,

BEATE MARINE IMMACULATE,
BEATO JOSEPHO, ECCLESLE PATRONO,
AC SANCTIS APOSTOLIS PETRO ET PAULO,,
ROMANE SEDIS FUNDATORIBUS,

HOC QUALECUMQUE OPUS
AUCTOR HUMILLIMUS
DICAVIT.

Digitized by LjOOQle

GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX.

Digitized by LjOOQle

Digitized by

GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX

ABELARD. Early life, 11., 227. Marries Heloise, 230. The catastrophe, 230.
Founds the “Paraclete", 232. False sentimentality in regard to the
famous couple, 234. The “Letters of Heloise" not genuine, 235. The
tomb at Pdre-Lachaise, 236, in Note. St. Bernard attacks certain doctrines
of Abdlard, and they are condemned by the Synod of Sens, 237. Pope
Innocent II. enjoins perpetual silence on Abdlard, 240. Reconciliation with
St. Bernard, and retirement to Cluny, 241. Abelard was never a heretic, 244.
ABGAR, King of Edessa. His alleged correspondence with Our Lord, I., 67.
ACACIUS. Schism of, I., 344.

ACTON, LORD JOHN. His comments on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s
Day, III., 414. He was the evil genius of Dcellinger, VI., 414.

ADAMNAN. His “Life of St Columbkille", I., 310.

ADRIAN, Rom. Emp. Persecutes the Christians, I., 47.

ADRIAN VI.. POPE. Early career. III., 287.

A2GIDIUS OF VITERBO. III., 287.

A2LFRIC OF CANTERBURY. His belief in the Real Presence. I., 401.
jEONS. The Thirty Intelligences, male and female, according to the Valen-
tinians, I., 34.

AETIUS, Leader of the Anomeean Arlans, I., 230, in Note.

AFFRE, Archbishop of Paris. Death at the barricades, V., 317, in Note.
AGNES SOREL. Not the rival of Joan of Arc, III., 83.

AILLY (DE ALLIACO) CARD. D’. One of the judges of John Huss, III. 3.
His opinion of the Council of Pisa, 23.

ALBAN I, JOHN FRANCIS, CARD. His rebuke to Cardinal de Bernls, V., 3,

* in Note.

ALBIGENSES. History and doctrines, II., 350. Their disgusting immoralities,
352, in Note.

ALBRET, QUEEN JEANNE D\ Her violent persecutions of Catholics, III.,.

372. Not poisoned by Catharine del Medici, 394.

ALCUIN. On the Holy Eucharist, I., 404.

ALEMAN, CARD. His conduct at the Council of Basel, III., 108.
ALEXANDER SEVERUS, Rom. Emp. Kind to Christians, but not a Christian,.

1., 51.

ALEXANDER III, POPE. See LOMBARD LEAGUE.

ALEXANDER VI., POPE. Authorities on whom the decriers of this Pontiff
necessarily rely. The “Diary" of Burkh&rd is of no value in the premises,

111., 203. Guicciardini is unreliable because of his intense enmity to the •
Borglas, 206. Jovius was venal, and a self-confessed liar in historical'
matters, 207. Tomasl was Interested in defaming Alexander, 207. The often-
adduced manuscript narratives are either anonymous or mere diatribes, 208.
The election of Alexander was not simoniacal, 211. His conduct toward
Prince Zizim, 215. It is not certain that Roderick Borgia was the father
of Caesar, Lucretla, etc., 222. Course of the Pontiff in the. matter of
Savonarola, 237, 239, 243, 247.

ALEXANDER I., Czar. Probably died a Catholic, V., 93.

ALEXANDER II., Czar. Persecutes the Catholics, V., 102.

ALEXANDER III., Czar. Persecutes the Catholics, V., 139
ALTARS. Removed from all English sanctuaries, III., 469

691

Digitized by L^oooLe

692

8TUDEE8 IN CHURCH HISTORY.

AMEDEO VIII., of Savoy. Made an Anti-Pope by the synod&ls of Basel, III.,
116. Submits to Pope Eugenius IV., 119.

AMERICANISM, So-called. Condemned by Pope Leo XIII., VI., 334. Not a
mere figment of the pontifical imagination, 342.

ANACLETUS II., Anti-Pope. See PETER "LEONIS".

ANARCHISM. A progeny of the “International", VI., 383. Bakunlne and
Herzen apostles of Pan-Slavism, 391.

ANDORRA. A survival of the many happy republics of the Middle Age, VI., 562.

ANGLICAN "ORDERS". Invalid from a historical point of view. III., 49&
Their invalidity reaffirmed by Pope Leo XIII., VI., 230.

ANGLO-SAXONS. Their conversion, I., 395. Their faith thoroughly Papal, 398.

ANSELM, ST., of Canterbury. Successfully resists Henry I. in the matter of
Investitures, II., 174.

ANTIOCH, COUNCIL OF. Did not reject the term homoousi08, I., 149.

ANTIPODES. Dispute concerning them between St. Boniface and St. Virgil,
the Irish apostle of Carinthia, I., 527.

ANTI-POPE, The first, I., 127.

ANTONINUS PIUS, Rom. Emp. Persecutes the Christians, 1., 49.

APIARIUS. Excommunicated by his bishop in Africa, appeals to Pope Zosl-
mus, I., 264.

APPEALS TO THE ROMAN PONTIFF. The Council of Sardlca did not initiate
the right of appeal to the Holy See, said right being one of the papal pre-
rogatives, and history evincing its exercise at as early a date as 142, I., 212.

APPELLANTS. See UNIGENITUS.

ARANDA, Minister of Charles III. of Spain. His character, IV., 468.

ARCHETTI. His nunciature to Russia, V., 84.

ARIUS. His heresy, I., 196. Divisions of the sect, 200. Its course in Gaul, 96.

ARMENIANS. Vicissitudes of their Church, II., 343. The "New Schism”,
VI., 175.

ARNAULD, ANTHONY. The "Pope of the Jansenlsts”, IV., 115. Character-
istics of the entire Arnauld family, 141. See JANSENISM.

ARNOLD (of Rugby). His plan for the salvation of English Protestantism,
V., 436.

ASKEW, ANN. Burnt by order of Cranmer, III., 471.

ASTROLOGY. In the Middle Age, VI., 529.

AUBUSSON, CARD. D\ Grand-Master of the Knlghts-Hospitalers, VI., 664.

AUGSBURG, CONFESSION OF. III., 317.

AUGUSTINE, ST. (of Canterbury). Sent by Pope St. Gregory I. to convert the
Anglo-Saxons, I., 397. Was he the first "papistical” bishop in England,
or rather a thorough Protestant? 398. Did he massacre the monks of
Bangor? 417.

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. Religious conditions in our day, VI., 239.

AVIGNON, The Popes at, II., 487.

BABYLON. Rome thus designated by many ancient writers, I., 4.

BACON OF VERULAM. Not "the restorer of science", IV., 82.

BAIUS, MICHAEL. IV., 110.

BAPHOMET, The Gnostic and Templar mystery, II., 459.

BAPTISM. Controversy concerning its repetition, I., 132.

BARBAROSSA (Frederick I., Holy Rom. Emp.). Captures Rome, burns St.
Peter’s, and is crowned by his anti-pope, II., 278. Defeated by the Lom-
bard League at Legnano, 280. Submits to Pope Alexander III., 281.

BASEL, COUNCIL OF. Origin, III., 96. Attacks the pontifical prerogatives,
107. Its pretended deposition of Pope Eugenius IV., 115. Not oecumeni-
cal, 120.

BASILJANS. Their origin, V., 145, in Note.

Digitized by LjOOQle

GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX.

693

BASILIDES. His heresy, I., 29.

BAUTAIN. His doctrines condemned by Pope Gregory XVI., V., 256.

BAZARD, The supreme father of Saint-Simonlsm, V., 380.

BEATIFIC VISION. The private opinion of Pope John XXII., II., 499.

BECKET, J3T. THOMAS A. Contest with Henry II. and final martyrdom, II., 29L

BELGIUM. Her experience with Masonic legislation, VI., 310.

BELLARMINO. Congregation of the Index condemns his theory of a merely
indirect divine right of the Pontiff to depose monarchs, II., 204. His
treatise against the “Test” prescribed by James I. of England, IV., 18.
Certifies that Galileo made no abjuration at the first trial, 61.

BENEDICT XIV., POPE. Praises the Jesuits, IV., 444. Condemns the Jesuit
defenders of the Chinese Rites, VI., 684. His judgment on the historical
value of the Lessons in the Roman Breviary, 519.

BENEDICTINES. Their monasteries both workshops and houses of prayer,
II., 13, In Note.

BERENGARIUS. Nature of his error, II., 220. His chief opponents, 222. His
retractations, relapses, and probable final repentance, 223. Not a disciple
of Abelard, 220, In Note.

BERTRAM OF CORBIE. See RATRAMN.

BESSARION. Appeals to his fellow-schismatics to submit to the Holy See, III.,
129. Nearly elected Pope, 150.

BEZIER. Fable concerning barbarities of a papal legate during the storming
of, II., 355.

BIBLE. Early vernacular versions, III., 310.

BISMARCK, German Chancellor. His pretended “War for Civilization”, VI., 1.
Not a German patriot, 8, in Note. Prevents the restoration of French
royalty in 1873, 112. Conspires to dominate the Conclave of 1878, 139.

BLASPHEMERS. Their treatment In mediaeval France, VI., 636, in Note.

BOBBIO. Its celebrated monastery, I., 324.

BOCHER, JOAN. Burnt by order of Cranmer, III., 471.

BODY OF CHRIST. Basilides teaches that Our Lord changed bodies with the
Cyrenian, I., 29.

BOLINGBROKE (Henry St. John). Career and opinions, IV., 509, in Note.

BOLIVAR, Liberator of Peru, Columbia, etc., a victim of Freemasonry, VI., 59.

BOLOGNA, UNIVERSITY OF. II., 14, in Note.

BONAPARTE, NAPOLEON. See NAPOLEON.

BONAPARTE, JEROME. His pretended divorce, V., 65.

BONAPARTE, LUCIEN. Refuses to discard his wife at the command of his
Imperial brother, V., 70.

BONIFACE, ST. Apostle of the Germanic tribes. His dispute with St. Vir-
gllius (Ferghil) concerning the “form” of Baptism, I., 306. He was prob-
ably an Irishman, 520. He used neither force nor fraud for the conversion
of the German barbarians. 526. His dispute wl*h St. Virgilius in the
question of the Antipodes, 527. He was not an ignorant man, 527. Eulo-
gized by Cantfi, 529, in Note.

BONIFACE VIII., POPE. His election, II., 412. Contest with Philip the Fair,
414. The crime of Anagni, 421. His calumniators refuted, 424.

BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. Its origin. III., 465, Not approved by Pope
Paul IV., 476.

BORRI. “The Phoenix of Nature”. IV., 161.

BORRUSSIANISM. Foe of German patriotism, VI., 7.

BOSSUET. Controversy with Fenelon, IV.. 310. With Leibnitz, 373. The author-
ship of the “Defense of the Declaration of the Galilean Clergy”, I., 480;
IV.. 269.

POURBON, CHARLES DE (The Constable). Traitor to his country. III., 341, in
Note. Killed at the walls of Rome, 344.

Digitized by i^oooLe

694

STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

BRAZIL. Ravages of Freemasonry, VI., 60.

BREVIARY, ROMAN. Its latest revision by Pope Urban VIII., IV., 49. Its
Lessons In the Second Nocturn open to historical criticism, VI.,. 619.

BRITISH CHURCH (EARLY). Its foundation, I., 896. The Easter Controversy
no argument against the admission of Roman Supremacy by the early
British Christians, 114. Proofs of this admission, 418. See ENGLAND.

BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. Their foundation and career,
IV., 180.

BRUCKER. Praised cautiously by Tira|>oschi, I., 389, in Note.

BRUNO. GIORDANO. The Roman monument, III., 579. Judgments of his
biographers, 682. His early career, 684. Doffs his Dominican habit, 586.
His wanderings and his “New Philosophy”, 687. The Venetian trial, 598.
The Roman trial and the catastrophe, 600.

BRUTfe, Bishop of Vincennes. His correspondence with Lamennals, V., 278, 300.

BUONAVENTURA, ST. He presides at the private discussions of the Four-
teenth General Council, II., 381, in Note.

BURKE, EDMUND. His speech at Bristol on the Catholic Question, V., 162, 176.
Opposes state-patronage of the Catholic clergy, 188.

BURKHARD. Worthlessness of his “Diary”, III., 203.

BYRON, LORD. Votes for Catholic Emancipation, V., 194.

'CADALAO. Anti-Pope under name of Honorius II., II., 168.

■ C AGLIOSTRO (Joseph Balsamo). Founds the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry,
IV., 419. His complicity in the affair of the Diamond Necklace, 670.

‘CAHBNSLYISM, So-called. The question concerning the religious progress or
defection of the Catholic Latin, Teutonic, and other immigrants in the
United States, VI., 320.

CAJETAN, CARD. Early career. III., 28 8. Meets Luther, 306. Too partial
to the League, 424.

CALIXT1NES. A branch of the Hussites, III., 11.

CALIXTUS III., POPE. His alleged excommunication of a comet. III., 161. His
efforts against the Turks, 164.

CALVIN. Early career. III., 358. Affair of Servetus, 361. His spirit, 364. His
doctrines, 366.

CAMISARDS. Their rebellion and atrocities, IV., 286.

CAM^ANELLA. Not a “martyr to science”, and not a victim of the Inquisi-
tion, III., 562. He was an exceedingly intolerant Catholic, 565.

CAMPEGGI, CARD. At the Diet of Nuremberg, III., 314. Course in England
in the matter of Henry VIII. and the Boleyn, 356. Calumniated by Burnet.
356, in Note.

CANNING, GEORGE. Espouses the cause of Catholic Emancipation in the
British Dominions, V., 193.

CANONESSES. Meaning of this term, VI., 626.

CANTU. Prince of modern historians, VI., 441. His judgment on Giobertl, V.,
388. His experience with the Congregation of the Index, III., 189, in Note.

CAPISTRANO, ST. JOHN. Relieves Belgrade, III., 154.

CAPTIER, FATHER FCS. Murdered by the Communists of 1871, VI., 98.

CARBONARI. Origin and meaning, V., 481. Their connection with Freemasonry,
486. Scheme for the election of a Carbonaro Pope, 493. Mazzini dominates
the Alta Vendtta, 600.

CARDUCCI. Poet of Atheism. VI., 156, in Note.

CARLISM. In Spain. Its origin and significance, V„ 269.

CAROLINIAN BOOKS. Not written by an Iconoclast, I., 484.

C A PT^L> R, FMILIO. His religious sentiments, VI., 196.

CASUISTRY. Its meaning, IV., 162, In Note.

OAT API IRYGIANS. Their heresy, I., 36.

Digitized by i^ooQle

GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX.

695

CATHARI. A sect of the W&ldenses, II., 312.

CATHARINE OF SIENA, ST. Her influence on Pope Gregory XI. for the
termination of the “Captivity of Babylon”, II., 493. Her conversation with
Pope Urban VI. on the then imminent Schism, 527, In Note.

CATHARINE DEI MEDICI. Her character. III., 398. Her connection with the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 409.

CATHARINE II., Czarina. Her persecuting career, V., 80. Her friendship
with Voltaire, IV., 536, 552, 554.

CAVOUR, CAMILLO BENSO DI. Calumniates the Papal government at the
Congress of Paris, V., 625. His methods of annexation, 533, in Note. De-
clares in parliament that It was only by favor of Napoleon III. that Pied-
mont annexed the Romagna, 634. His ostensibly Christian death, 643, in
Note. He adopts from Mcntalembert the formula “A Free Church In A
Free State”, and travesties it, 662.

CELESTIUS. Chief disciple of Pelagius, I., 254.

CELIBACY, CLERICAL. Its antiquity, II., 190. Custom of the Christians of
the Oriental Rites, both United and Schismatic, 192. Objections deduced
from Apostolic usage, 194. Opinion of Bacon of Verulam, 198, in Note.
Many dispensations granted in this matter to both the secular and regular
clergy, 199. Laxity of the Russian “Orthodox” Church in regard to its own
canons concerning this subject, 192, in Note.

CENCI, BEATRICE. The tragedy. III., 568. Justification of the course pur-
sued by Pope Clement VIII., 676.

CEREMONIES, SACRED. Not copied from the Pagans, I., 170. Mistakes of
Gerson, Petau, and some other Catholic writers In this matter, there not
being one Catholic rite of Pagan origin, 174.

CERULARIUS. Revives the Photian Schism, II., 123.

CIIALCEDON, GEN. COUNCIL OF. Not convoked by the emperor, Marcion, I.,
332. The synodals did not examine Judicially the Dogmatic Epistle of Pope
St. Leo I. to Flavian, I., 337. The superiority of a General Council over
the Pope not evinced by the Acts of this Council, 340.

CHAPTERS. THE THREE. The controversy on, I., 359.

CHARLEMAGNE. Significance of his imperial title, II., 26. Meaning of his
office as “Patrician of the Romans”, 36. Falsity of the assertion that he
could not write, 17.

CHARLES IX., King of France. His connection with the Massacre of St. Bar-
tholomew’s Day, III., 409. Circumstances of his death, 418.

CHARLES ALBERT, King of Sardinia. His Carbonarism, V., 490.

CHARLES II., King of England. Received by Father Oiler into the Church
during his residence in Paris, IV., 175, In Note.

CHARLES V., King of Spain and Holy Rom. Emp. His character. III., 293.
Sacks the Eternal City, 344.

CHRISTIANITY. Its rapid propagation a proof of its divine origin, I., 59.

CHRISTIANS OF ST. THOMAS, So-called. I., 288.

CHRISTINA. Queen of Sweden. Her character and conversion, IV., 194, in Note.

CHRYSOSTOM, JOHN, ST. Appeals to Pope St. Innocent I., I., 246.

CHRONICLERS, MEDIAEVAL. Their zeil, II., 112.

CIVILTA, CATTOLICA, Roman Review. Its foundation and character, VI.. 402.

CLARENDON, CONSTITUTIONS OF. Occasion of the dissension between St.
Thomas fi Becket and Henry II., II., 294.

CLAUDE OF TURIN. Not the founder cf the Wa’.denses, II., 317.

CLEMANGIS. Value of his anti-clerical dec’amations, II., 631.

CLEMFNT I., POPE, ST. Shows that St. Peter came to Rome, I., 8. His
writings, 72.

CLEMENT V., POPE. His election not the result of a bargain with Philip the
Fa'.r, II., 435. Justification of his suppression of the Templars. 461.

Digitized by i^ooQle

696 STUDIES IN CHURCH HI8T0RY.

CLEMENT VII., POPE. Made prisoner by the emperor, Charles V., III., 344.
Efforts for a Crusade, 352. His course In the matter of Henry VIII. and
the Boleyn, 353.

CLEMENT VIII., POPE. Protests against the expulsion of the Jesuits from
France because of the attempt of Chatel, III., 553. Allows all Religious
Orders to labor in Japan, 557. Makes Tasso poet-laureate, 569. Justification
of his course toward the Cenci, 568.

CLEMENT XIV., POPE. His election not slmoniacal, IV., 477. Suppresses the
Jesuits, 481. Calumniated by Crltineau-Joly, 443, 477. Did not die in-
sane, 497.

CLOTILDA, ST., Queen of the Franks. Circumstances of her marriage, and
her alleged cruelties, VI., 590.

CLOVESHOE, SYNOD OF. Shows that the early Anglo-Saxon Church acknowl-
edged the Papal supremacy, I., 410.

CLOVIS. His conversion, VI., 588. His alleged post-baptismal barbarities, 604.

COLUMBANUS, ST. Work of his monks at Bobbio, I., 324.

COMET OF 1466. Its alleged excommunication. III., 151.

COMMUNE OF PARIS (1871). The massacre of the “hostages”, VI., 88. Free-
masonry responsible for these horrors, 107. CulpabllMy of Thiers, 94.

COMTE. Styled by his disciples the Father of Positivism. His doctrines, V.,
384. Positivism destructive of all human grandeur, 385.

CONCLAVE. The “right of exclusion”. VI., 140.

CONFESSION, AURICULAR. Not condemned by the fact of Nectarius, I., 166.

CONSALVI, CARD. His early career, V., 10. Arranges the Concordat with
Napoleon, 16. His reply to Napoleon’s demand for a Papal alliance with
France, 30. His negotiations for Catholic Emancipation in the British
dominions, 208, 212.

CONSTANCE, COUNCIL OF. Its history. III., 26. Value of the decrees Issued
In its fourth and fifth sessions, 42.

CONSTANTINOPLE, FIRST GEN. COUNCIL OF. (Ecumenical merely because
of its confirmation by the Roman Pontiff, I., 240.

CONSTANTINE, First Christian Roman Emperor. Historical truth of his vision
of the Cross,* I., 150. His baptism near Nicomedia, 151. He did not become
an Arlan, 158.

CONSTITUTIONAL CHURCH OF FRANCE. Origin and shameful career,
IV., 605.

CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. It is of medlroval origin, II., 4, in Note.

CONSTITUTIONAL OR PUBLIC LAW. Its meaning. II., 212, In Note.

COPERNICUS. Not the author of the heliocentric system, IV., 83. His teach-
ings condemned by Luther and Melancthon as crazy and heretical, 84.
Derided by Montaigne and Bacon, and doubted by Pascal, 86, in Note. His
treatment by the Congregation of the Index, 89, in Note.

COPRONYMUS, CONSTANTINE. Eastern Emp. Sustains the Iconoclasts, I.,
469. His bribes spurned by King Pepin, 471.

COTTERELS, Bands of Albigenslan cutthroats, II., 287.

COUNCILS, (ECUMENICAL. First: at Nice, I., 196. Second; First of Con-
stantinople, 240. Third; at F-'hesus, 276. Fourth; at Chalcedon, 329. Fifth;
Second of Constantinople, 359. Sixth; Third of Constantinople, 419. Seventh;
Second of Nice, 466. Eighth; Fourth of Constantinople, II., 55. Ninth; First
of the Lateran, 265. Tenth; Second of the Lateran, 268. Eleventh; Third
of the Lateran, 284. Twelfth; Fourth of the Lateran, 360. Thirteenth;
First of Lyons, 370. Fourteenth: Second of Lyons, 379. Fifteenth; at
Vienne in France (Tsfcre), 446. Sixteenth; at Florence, III., 123. Seven-
teenth: Fifth of the Lateran, 265. Eighteenth; at Trent, 511. Nineteenth;
at the Vatican, V., 571.

COURTS ECCLESIASTICAL, In England, II.. 292, In Note.

Digitized by CjOOQie

GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX.

697

COUSIN, VICTOR. His philosophy, V., 376.

CREED. Addition of the FMoque, II., 81.

CRESCENS, ST. Preaches in Gaul In the first century, I., 87.

CRITICISM, SCIENCE OF. Not unknown in the Middle Age, II., 9, in Note.

CROSS, VENERATION OF THE. Its antiquity, I., 464. Absurd objection
adduced by Claude of Turin, 465. Dutch Protestants trample on the Cross
in Japan, III., 558; V., 402.

CROZIER. Why the Roman Pontiff has none, I., 88, In Note.

CRUSADES. Origin, II., 246. Authors worthy of consultation on this subject,
252. Value of the Holy Wars, 253. Their alleged folly and injustice, 254.
Their effects on art, science, and literature, 257.

CUMMIAN, ST., THE HERMIT. Proclaims the supremacy of the Roman
Pontiff, I., 301.

CURCI, CARLO. His vagaries, condemnation, and retractation, VI., 400.

CYPRIAN, ST. Asserts the Roman Pontificate of St. Peter, I., 24. Appeals to
the Holy See in the matter of the “Fallen'’, 123. Was not excommunicated
by Pope St. Stephen, 135. He regarded the re-baptismal question as one
of mere discipline, 138. He reverently acknowledged the Papal preroga-
tives, 142.

DAMASCENE, ST. JOHN. His doctrine on the Real Presence, I., 478.

DAMIAN, ST. PETER. His “Dialogue” in defence of the Papal prerogatives,
II., 168.

DANTE, ALLEGED HERESIES OF. His accusers, II., 608. Judgment of his
contemporaries, 510. His Ghlbelllnism Implied no hatred of the tiara, 511.
His invectives against certain Pontiffs were caused by devotion to the
Chair of Peter, 512. He insists on the Papal prerogatives, 513. He pro-
claims hi3 belief in Good Works and in Free Will, 616. He insists on
prayer for the souls In Purgatory, 516. Absurdity of the theory of Rossetti
and Aroux, according to which the “Divine Comedy” was a praise of the
Vaudois, but disguised in order to outwit the Inquisition, 619.

DARBOY, Archbishop of Paris. Rebuked by Pius IX. for participation in the
quasi-Masonic funeral of Marshal Magnan, V., 565, In Note. His arrest,
imprisonment, and murder by the Commune of Paris, VI., 88. Respon-
sibility of Thiers for this crime, 94.

DEACONESSES. An institution of the primitive Church, VI., 625.

DECLARATION OF THE FRENCH CLERGY IN 1662. Its history, IV., 229.
Its famous “Defense” was probably not written by Bossuet, I., 480, in Note.

DECRETALS OF ISIDORE MERCATOR. Their origin, II., 90. Not approved
by Rome, 97. Who was their author?, 99. Their object, 103.

DENIS THE AREOPAGITE. His works, I., 75. He was not Bishop of Paris, 85.

DEPOSING POWER OF THE POPE. Various Catholic systems regarding this
right, II., 203. Indisputable existence of a belief In it until very modern
times, 207. Leibnitz wished for its recognition, 208. The Holy Roman
Empire was, in a sense, a fief of the Holy See, 209. Oath of fidelity to the
Pontiff taken by the emperor, 211. The deposing power was recognized by
the public law of Spain, 213. By that of England, 214. By that of the
Two Sicilies, 214. By that of France, as early as the sixth century, 216.
By that of the Holv Roman Empire, 217. Advantages of the power ad-
mitted by such Protestant luminaries as Coquerel and Ancillon, and even
by Voltaire, 219.

DESCARTES. His system on certitude apparently favored by the Council of
the Vatican, V., 583.

DIOCLETIAN. His persecution of the Christians, I., 56. His presumed con-'
nection with the alleged idolatry of Pope St. Marcellinus, VI., 513.

Digitized by CjOOQle

4598

8TUDEE8 IK CHUBCH HISTORY.

DIOSCORUS. Why his cause was treated by the Chalcedonian synodals, even
after they had read the Dogmatic Epistle of Pope St. Leo I., I., 340.

DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS. Not a Catholic, but a Protestant theory, VI., 617.

DIVORCE FOR ADULTERY. Practice of the Greeks, both Catholic and Schis-
matic, III., 137; V., 65.

DODWELL, HENRY. Tries to minimize the sufferings of the persecuted early
Christians, I., 41, 61.

DOSLLINGER. His apostasy, V., 607. His faith shlpwreoked ten years before
the Vatican Council, VI., 413. His evil genius was Lord John Acton, 414.
His tergiversations, 418. His volte-lace in regard to the Jews, 423. His
Rationalism. 424.

DOGMATIC EPISTLES OF THE ROMAN PONTIFFS. Never submitted to
Juridical examination in a General Council, I., 284, 337, 480.

DOMINICK, ST. His mission to the Alblgenses, II., 354. Not the founder of
the Inquisition, 390.

DOMINION (PAPAL) IN THE ROMAN STATES. Its origin antedates the
“donations” of the French monarchs, I., 602. The “donation” of Pepin,
506. Territorial modifications of the Papal States, 512. Their consolidation,
517. Absolutism in their government a very modern system, 517, In Note.
Their armed defence against invasion or rebellion a right and duty of the
Pope-King, II., 140; III., 262. It Is the unanimous opinion of the episcopate
that this dominion is. In the present state of society, necessary for the
freedom of the Roman Pontiff, II., 141, in Note.

DOMINIS, MARC ANTONIO DE. His apostasy, recantation, and problematical
sincerity of repentance. III., 467.

DOMITIAN. His persecution of the Christians, I., 46.

DONATISTS. Their history, I., 187. They did not appeal to the emperor from
the decision of Pope Melcbiades, 193.

DROSTE-VISCHERING, Archbishop of Cologne, V., 254, 258.

DUBOIS. CARD. His character, IV., 361.

DUPANLOUP. Early career, V., 349. His controversy on the classics with
Mgr. Gaume, 354. Champions the cause of the Pope-King, 365. His atti-
tude in the Council of the Vatican, 358.

DUTCH. Trample on the Cross in Japan, III., 558. Vain efforts of Protestant
writers to Justify this sacrilege, V., 402.

EASTER CONTROVERSY. Its origin, I., 105. The dispute concerned discipline
alone. 108. Terminated by the Council of Nice, 112.

EBION. His heresy, I., 30.

EDICT OF NANTES. Its provisions and its effects on France, IV., 271. Its
revocation, 275. Popularity of the revocation In France, 276- Even the
“great” Arnauld favored it, 277. By this revocation France lost less than
fifty thousand citizens, 277. By it she lost no considerable amount of
wealth, 281. By it she lost no military strength, 284. The rebellion of
the Camisards, 286. Mme. de Malntenon did not procure or counsel the
revocation, 291. The bishops of France were not consulted in the matter,
298. The provisions of the revocation were conformable to that Protestant
invention, the Peace of Westphalia, 301.

EDWARD, ST., LAWS OF. Attest the right of the Pope to depose wicked or
heretical rulers, II., 214.

ELECTIONS, PAPAL. Their history down to the days of Hildebrand, II., 162.
Their freedom defended by St. Gregory VII., before and during his pon-
tificate, 166.

ELEVENTH GEN. COUNCIL. Its convocation, II., 284. Provides that a two-
thirds’ vote will elect a Pope, 285. Condemns the Waldenses, 2*6. Invigo-
rates discipline, 288. Protects the clergy from episcopal extortion during

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visitations, 288. Ordains that all bequests to Religious Orders must be
shared with the parish churches, 289. Prescribes free schools for the poor
in the neighborhood of all cathedrals, 290.

ELIZABETH, Queen of England. Undoes the work of Queen Mary, III., 475.
Institutes her new hierarchy, granting all requisite dispensations, 477. *

EMANCIPATION, CATHOLIC, In the English dominions, V., 159.

EMERY. Quotes Bossuet against Napoleon, V., 40.

EMPIRE, HOLY ROMAN. Its foundation, II., 23. It was, in a sense, a fief of
the Holy See, 209. By its creation, did Pope St. Leo III. benefit the
Church? 25. Need for study of its nature, 26. The Roman Pontiff was
the source of all the emperor’s authority, 28. Meaning of the title “Patrician
of the Romans”, borne by the early emperors, 36. The emperor did not owe
his position to the Senate and People of Rome, 39. Condition of the
Empire in the seventeenth century, IV., 68. In the eighteenth, 373.

EMS, CONGRESS OF. Quasi-schismatlcal, IV., 600.

ENCYCLOPEDIA, DIDEROT’S. Judged by its own founders, IV., 534.

ENFANTIN, “PERE”. Supreme father of Saint-Slmonism, V., 380.

ENGLAND. Conversion, I., 396. Transformation of the phenomenally barbarous
Anglo-Saxons, 397. The early English Church was “papistical”, 398. Its
belief in Transubstantiation, 400. Its constant practice of Auricular Con-
fession, 406. Its belief in Purgatory, 406. It gloried in its spiritual sub-
jection to the Roman Pontiff, 408. Its clergy were celibltic, 414. Its Prot-
estantlzatlon. III., 463. Religious Orders still illegal, V., 181, in Note.
See also BRITISH CHURCH.

EPHESUS, GEN. COUNCIL OF. History, I., 280. (Ecumenical because Pope
Celestlne consented to its convocation, presided over it by means of his
legates, and confirmed it, 283. The synodals did not examine juridically
the* decrees of the Pontiff, 284.

EPIPHANIUS, ST. Shows that St. Peter founded the See of Rome, I., 12.

EQUADOR. Ravaged by the Freemasons, VI., 64. The murder of President

, Garcia Moreno, 71.

ERASMUS. His career, III., 334. His uncompromising Catholicism, 337.

ERRINGTON, GEORGE. His “officious” mission from the English government
to Pope Leo XIII. In the matter of Irish Home Rule, VI., 220.

EUCHARIST, HOLY. The doctrine on the Real Presence underwent no change
in the tenth century, II., 107.

EUGENIUS IV, POPE. Rebukes the emperor, Sigismund, III., 97. His pretended
deposition, 115. His character, 119, in Note. His rejection of the Baselean
decrees on Conciliar supremacy, 122.

EUTYCHIANISM. The opposite of Nestorianlsm, I., 329.

EXARCHS OF RAVENNA, Exercised very little Influence in Rome, I., 504,
in Note.

EXCLUSION, RIGHT OF, In the Conclave. Its meaning and history, VI., 139.

EXEGESIS, THE NEW. Founded by Ernesti, V., 366.

EXOTERIC AND ESOTERIC DOCTRINES. In the Discipline of the Secret
among the early Christians, I., 99.

FABER, F. W. His connection with the Oxford Movement, V., 450.

FALSTAFF, SHAKESPEARE’S. Meant to represent Sir John Oldcastle, II., 580.

FEBRONIANISM. History and significance, IV., 397. Its essential difference
from Galllcanism, 400.

FENELON. Explains the power of the Pope to depose wicked and tyrannical
rulers, II., 2C5. His controversy with Bossuet in the matter of Quietism,
IV., 310. His alleged duplicity and phllosophism, 326. Meaning of his
“Telemachus”, 333.

FELINSKI, Archbishop of Warsaw. Victim of “Holy Russia”, V., 107.

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700 STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

FERDINAND OF BULGARIA. Delivers his infant son to the Photian Schism
VI., 178.

FERGHIL. See VIRGILIUS.

FERRY LAWS. Their origin, meaning, and effects, VI., 114.

FICHTE. His “philosophical" aberrations, V., 370.

FIFTH GEN. COUNCIL. (Ecumenical because confirmed by Pope Vigilius, I.,
366. Not contrary to the Council of Chalcedon, 371. Not favorable to the
superiority of a General Council over the Pontiff. 378.

FLACCIUS ILLYRICUS. Chief of the Centuriators of Magdeburg, II., 27. An
illustration of his calibre, 34.

FLAM IN IO, MARCANTONIO. His orthodoxy, III., 460.

FLEURY, CLAUDE. His virulency toward Pope Innocent III., II., 344.

FLORENCE, GEN. COUNCIL OF. Its first sessions at Ferrara, III., 123. Trans-
ferred to Florence, 127. The leaders of the Photian Schism acknowledge
the Papal supremacy, 130. The Galilean theory concerning the aecumenicity
of this Council, 132.

FOURIER. His Phalansterian system, V., 382.

FOURTEENTH GEN. COUNCIL, The emperor of the Greeks, Michael Paleol-
ogus, and the Constantlnopolitan patriarch abjure the Photian Schism in
the name of their compatriots, II., 3S1.

FRANCE. The attempted Protestantization of, III., 368. Some of the reasons
for its failure, 392. The Third French Republic as a persecutor of the
Church, VI., 111.

FRANCIS I., King of France. Reconciled with Pope Leo X., III., 283. His
candidature for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, 292. His character
compared with that of the emperor, Charles V., 293.

FRANCIS II., King of the Two Sicilies. His weakness, rectitude, and heroism,
V., 637.

FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN. His adoration of Voltaire, IV., 540, 542.

FRANKS. Their conversion, VI., 685.

FRATICELLI. Franciscan schismatics, II., 500.

FREDERICK II., Holy Roman Emperor. His excommunication, II., 372. His
probably Impenitent death, 379.

FREDERICK II., King of Prussia. His relations with Voltaire, IV., 621. His
unnatural immoralities, 523, 525; 551, in Note. His Political Testament,.
562, in Note.

FREE CHURCH IN A FREE STATE. As differently interpreted by Montalem-
bert and by Cavour, V., 552.

FREEMASONRY. Its origin, organization, and object, IV., 408. Its first con-
demnation by the Holy See, 411. How can it be studied? 412. Its
"Powers", 418. Its development by Cagliostro, 420. By Weisahaupt, 427.
It is a religion, 430. Its "Secret”, 431. Why is it more virulent in Catholic
than in Protestant countries? 437. Has It one directive centre? V., 497.
Its connection with Socialism, VI., 359. With the "International" and
Anarchism, 384. Its origin in Spain, V., 262, in Note. In Portugal, 266. In
Austria-Hungary, VI., 243, in Note. In Belgium, 312, in Note. Its ravages
in Brazil, 50. In Columbia, 59. In Equador, 64. In Argentina, 76. In
Venezuela, 78. In Chili, 77. In Peru, 81. In Mexico, 82. The Masonic
Anti-Council of 1869, V., 576. The projected Universal Congress of Masonry
for 1882, which was to openly proclaim the Masonic denial of God and of
the immortality of the soul, VI., 160. The Lodges prevent a monarchist
restoration in France in 1873, 112. Reasons for which Leo XIII. renewed
the condemnations of the sect launched by many of his predecessors. 186.

FREPPEL, Bishop of Angers. His judgment on the French Revolution, IV.,
617, In Note.

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FRERE-ORBAN. Aids the Masonic campaign against freedom of education in
Belgium, VI., 310,

FROUDE, J. ANTHONY. Blames the Oxford Movement for his agnosticism,
V., 477.

FROUDE, R. HURRELL. His influence on the Oxford Movement, V., 437,
in Note.

GALILEO. Restorer of science, IV., 81. The Church and the heliocentric sys-
tem, 83. First trial of Galileo, 88. The second trial, 96. The imprisonment
of the scientist' was merely nominal, and there was no torture, 96. The
alleged protest "And yet it moves" is unauthentic and intrinsically ab-
surd, 98. Various conclusions of Catholic polemics who have treated this
matter, 102. Galileo’s teachings were not condemned by the Church, but
by the Congregation of the Holy Office, 106.

GALLICANISM. Its meaning, IV., 229. The Assembly of the French Clergy
in 1682, 231. Their famous "Declaration", 254.

GANGANDLLI. See CLEMENT XIV.

GARIBALDI, JOSEPH. His murderous career during the Roman Republic of
1848, V., 52L His opera-bouffe "campaign" in the Two Sicilies, 636. His
defeat at Mentana, 546. As "the first Mason of Italy", he proclaims
"reason" as his "religion", IV., 435. Elected Grand-Master of Italian
Masonry, V., 544.

GARNET, HENRY, S. J. His alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, IV.,
41. His alleged equivocations, 46.

GAUME, JOHN. His controversy with Dupanloup on the classics, V., 354.

GENTILE, VALENTINO. His Unitarlanism, III., 451. Put to death by the
Calvinists of Berne, 452.

GEORGE III., King of England. Opposes Catholic Emancipation, V., 186.

GEORGE IV., King of England. His alleged religious scruples in regard to
Catholic Emancipation, V., 215. Curses Daniel O’Connell, 217, in Note.

GERBET, Bishop of Perpignan. His relations with Lamennais, V., 279, 286.

GDRDIL, CARD. His learning and ability, V., 9, in Note.

GERMAIN OF AUXERRE, ST. Preserves the early British Church from Pelag-
ianism, I., 395.

GERSON. Value of his assertion that Gregory XI. regretted the abandonment
of Avignon, II., 493. Accuses Hubs, III., 3, 16. His course concerning the
Council of Pisa, 19, 24. He would have given to the laity a right to vote
in General Councils, 32. His treatise on the removability of the Pon-
tiff, II., 533.

GESTA DEI PER FRANCOS. VI., 590, 608.

GIBBON, EDWARD. Judged by Cantfl, II., 6.

GIBBONS, CARD. Defends the Knights of Labor, VI., 368.

GILDAS. Asserts the unbroken submission of the early British Church to the
Holy See, 1., 418.

GIOBERTI. Calumniates the Jesuits. IV., 442; 503, in Note. His semi-
rationalism, V., 388. EfTect of his writings on many of the younger
Italian clergy, 240. His polemics with Curcl, VI., 400.

GLADSTONE. His false interpretation of Montalembert’s motto, "Catholic
above all", V., 348. Refuses to condemn Ward in the Oxford Convocation
of 1845, 465. Refuses to protest against the claim of the Royal Privy
Council to define the faith of the Church of England, 474. His influence
on Dcellinger, VI., 415, in Note.

GLEICHEN, The alleged two-wived Count, VI., 666.

GNOSTICS. Meaning of the term, I., 28. Their doctrines, 31. Their wickedness
imputed by the Pagans to the faithful, 32.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

GORDON RIOTS. Their occaaion, V., 175. Their chief promoter was John*
Wesley, 178.

GORHAM, G. C. The Royal Privy Council defines that Gorham, a minister ot
the English Establishment, can deny the doctrine of Baptismal Regenera-
tion and still exercise his ministry, V., 471.

GRATIAN, DECREE OF. Never approved by the Holy See, II., 97.

GRATRY. His opposition to the definition of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility,
and his final submission, V., 592.

GREGORY NAZIANZEN, ST. Not begotten while his father was a bishop,
II., 196.

GREGORY THE GREAT, ST., POPE. Checks the ambition of the Constan-
tinopolitan patriarch, I., 382. Adds to the Liturgy and institutes his Chant,
383. Resists Mauritius, 384. Exercises civil authority, 386. His alleged
hostility to learning, and his alleged burning of the Palatine Library, 389.
He destroyed no monuments of Roman grandeur, 392. His eulogy by St.
Udephonsus, 394.

GREGORY VII., ST., POPE (HILDEBRAND). The Hildebrandine Age, II., 144.
His election, 145. , His decree against Investitures, 149. Excommunicates;
the emperor-elect, Henry IV., 149. Receives the submission of Henry at
Canossa, 150. Renews the excommunication, 152. He never rescinded this'-
second decree, 154. Judgments on this Pontiff, 155. His spirit illustrated
by his Epistles, 158. See INVESTITURES.

GREGORY XI., POPE. Restores the papal residence to its legitimate seat, II.„
493. His alleged regret for having abandoned Avignon, 494. Absurd sup-
positions of Maimbourg in support of this allegation, 496.

GREGORY XVI., POPE. His election, V., 237. Thrf revolt in the Romagna, 242:
Impudent interference of the powers, 244. Condemnation of Hermesianism,.
251. Condemnation of the doctrines of Bautain, 255. Resists Prussia in*
the matter of civil marriages, 256. Recognizes the Isabelllst government in
Spain, 263. Condemns the slave-trade, 268. Rebukes the czar, Nicholas I.,
101. Gives an audience to Lamennals, 289. Condemns the Avenir, 291.

GROTIUS, HUGO. Asserts the Roman residence of St. Peter, I., 3. Contends1
that every sovereign has a right to prescribe the religion which his sub-
jects shall profess, IV., 60, in Note.

GUICCIARDINI. His authority as a historian, III., 206 ; 209, in Note. Hi*
judgment on Savonarola, 236.

GUIDO OF AREZZO. Determines the musical scale, II., 7.

GUISCARD, ROBERT. Makes his kingdom of the Two Sicilies a fief of the*
Holy See, II., 139, 215.

GUIZOT. His insult to the Dominicans, II., 355.

GUNPOWDER PLOT. The condition of the English Catholics of the time ex-
plains, though it does not Justify the plot, if there was one, IV., 20. The
commonly received story, 25. It is very probable that Cecil manipulated,
if he did not indeed concoct the plot, 29. Cecil’s object in furthering the*
plot, 39. The trial of Father Garnet, 41. His alleged equivocations, 46.

GUNTHERITES. Censured by Pius IX., II., 448.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, King of Sweden. A foe to religious liberty, IV.,
69. 73, 75. . .

GUYON, MME. JEANNE MARIE. Her “Quietism” frequently blasphemous;
IV., 308. She persuades FGnelon of her sanctity, 310. See FENELON and
QUIETISM.

HALLAM. Historian. His calibre, II., 6; 7, in Note; 344.

HAUGWITZ,. Prussian statesman. His revelations on Masonry at the Congress;
of Verona, VI., 48.

HEGEL. His “philosophical” theories, V., 3721.

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GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX. 703-

HEGESIPPUS. Asserts the Roman residence and martyrdom of St. Peter, I., 10-

HELEN, The paramour of Simon Magus, I., 27.

HELOISE. See ABELARD.

HENRY IV., King of France. His abjuration at Saint-Denis, III., 427. Ab-
solved by Clement VIII., 431. Sincerity of his conversion, 433. Protects-
the Jesuits after the attempt of Chatel, 563.

HENRY VIII., King of England. His Defence of the Seven Sacraments against
Luther, III., 312. The affair of the Boleyn, 353.

HENRY IV. Holy Rom, Emp. See GREGORY VII. and INVESTITURES.

HENRY V. Holy Rom. Emp. See INVESTITURES.

HENRY VI. Holy Rom. Emp. His brutality and perfidy, II., 320.

HERMBSIANISM. A pretended reconciliation of Revelation and Reason, V., 251.

HILARY, ST. His so-called “Fragments” are forgeries, I., 224.

HILDUIN OF- SAINT-DENIS. Deceived In the matter of the Areopagite, I., 89.

HIPPOLYTUS, ST. Shows the Roman Pontificate of St. Peter, I., 13.

HOME RULE, IN IRELAND. Action of Pope Leo XIII., VI., 216.

HONORIUS, POPE. His alleged heresy, I., 432. The incriminated letters were*
private epistles, not pontiflcally dogmatic, 436. They were orthodox, 440-
The Sixth Gen. Council did not condemn him as a heretic, 442. His defence
by St. Maximus Martyr, 447. By Anastatius the Librarian, 448.

HOPITAL, Tbe Chancellor de 1'. An equivocal Catholic, III., 378. This so-called^
“apostle of religious liberty” denounces the Huguenots as “a seditious
rabble, without God”, 379.

HOSPITALERS, KNIGHTS. Their heroism at Rhodes, VI., 662.

HUGUENOTS. Their atrocities, III., 388. See the MASSACRE OF ST. BAR-
THOLOMEW’S DAY.

HUME. Historian. Judged by Cantfi, II., 6.

HUNJADY. III., 142, 143, 154.

HUSS, JOHN. His career. III., 1. Doctrines, 6. Possibility of his sincerity, 13.
The matter of the safe-conduct, 14.

HUTTBN, ULRICH. His diatribes on Pope Julius II., III., 258.

HYACINTH, FATHER (Charles Loyson). His apostasy, V., 623.

TBAS OF EDESSA. One of the occasions of the Controversy on the Three-
Chapters, I., 360.

ICONOCLASM. Originated by the Arabic Jews, I., 466. Strengthened by Com-
stantine Copronymus, 469. Spurned by King Pepin, 471. Condemned by
the Seventh Gen. Council, 472. Resuscitated by the emperor, Leo the-
Armenian, 493. Adopted by Claude of Turin, by the Albigenses, and by
Luther, 499.

IGNATIUS, MARTYR, ST. His Epistles, I., 80.

ILLUMINATI. A development of Freemasonry, IV., 427. Many German priests
join the sect, 428. Conversion of Weisshaupt, its founder, 430.

IMAGES, SACRED. Their veneration not condemned by the French hierarchy
In 825, I., 495. Superstition of the Greeks of that time in this matter, 497.
See ICONOCLASM.

INGELBURGA, Queen of Philip Augustus. Her matrimonial rights protected
by Pope Innocent III., II., 331.

INNOCENT III., POPE. His relations with his temporal subjects, II., 324.
With the Empire and Sicily, 326. Excommunicates Otho IV., 330. His
relations with Philip Augustus of France, 331. Interdicts that kingdom.
332. Submission of Philip Augustus. 334. Relations of Innocent with Kin*
John of England, 336. John excommun'cated, 339. John yields, and become t
a vassal of the Holy See, 340, 349. Reason for the Pontiff’s condemnation
of the revolted English barons, 364, in Note. Innocent not blamable for
the excesses of Simon de Montfort, 358. His efforts to terminate the*

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

Greek Schism, 34L Armenia and Bulgaria resume their unity with the
Church, 343. Fleury’s insinuation that Innocent narrowly escaped eternal
damnation, 345. Judgments on this Pontiff, 346.

INNOCENT VIII., POPE. Early career. III., 195. Insists on the Papal
suzerainty over the Two Sicilies, 197. Condemns certain errors of Pico
della Mirandola, 200. His alleged permission to dispense with wine in
the consecration of the Holy Eucharist, 202.

INQUISITION, THE HOLY. Antiquity of the idea, II., 387. St. Augustine
favors it, 388, 389. This tribunal was founded neither by Innocent III. nor
by St. Dominick, but by Gregory IX., about the year 1229, 390. It Is not
to be confounded with the Venetian “Inquisition of State", a purely
political Institution, 392; nor with the Spanish Inquisition, a royal tribunal,
397. Creation of the Roman “Holy Office” in 1542, 392. Its general mild-
ness, 394. The falsehoods of Llorente, Limborch, and Mme. d’Aunoy con-
cerning the Spanish Inquisition, 397. Its code of procedure, 407.

INTERNATIONAL, (The. Its connection with Freemasonry, VI., 384.

INVESTITURES, QUESTION OF. Its significance, II., 170. Abuses of In-
vestitures, 171. Gregory VII. struck at the root of the evil, 175. Nearly al!
his immediate successors imitated his firmness, 176. Pope Paschal im-
prisoned by the emperor, Henry V., 181. Paschal allows the imperial
claim, but afterward revokes his “Privilege”, 182. The imperial preten-
sions satisfied by the Anti-Pope Borodino, 183; but Pope Calixtus II. re-
asserts his prerogative, and the emperor submits, 184. Henry resumes the
contest, and Is excommunicated, 186. At length Henry yields definitively,
and the struggle is practically ended, 186. The contest was not a dispute
about nothing, 187.

IRELAND. Her conversion, I., 289. Her faith always that of Rome, 292. Her
share in the Easter Controversy, 114, 118. Her early Christian missions to
foreign lands, 327. Innumerable Irish saints are patrons of foreign cities,
327. Irish Home Rule In the mind of the Holy See, VI., 216. The
“officious” mission of George Errington to Leo XIII., 220.

ISIDORE MERCATOR. See DECRETALS.

ISIDORE OF SEVILLE, ST. Not the author of the False Decretals, II., 99.

ISLAM. Its doctrines, I., 465. Their chief Christian opponents, 468. The propa-
gation of Islam contrasted with that of Christianity, 460. Its turpitude, 461.

ITALY. Attempts to effect her Protestantizatlon, III., 441. Apparent wayward-
ness of certain Italian literati, 469. Italy lost no worldly prosperity by her
rejection of Protestantism, 461.

JAMES I., King of England. Prescribes a Test Oath for Catholics, IV., 16.

JANISZEWSKI, Auxiliary Bishop of Posen. VI., 1, 6, 8, 19, 21.

JANSENISM. Its history, IV., 108. The distinction of “fact” and “right”,
122. The Case of Conscience on “respectful silence”, 129. The pretended
miracles of Jansenism, 132, 140. Its seditious spirit, 133. Judgments of
Cousin and Voltaire, 134. Reasons for the obstinacy of the Jansenists, 138.
Characters of the chief Jansenlst leaders, 113, 115, 141, 143. See PASCAL.

JAPAN, Christianity In. Origin, V., 390. Persecutions, 392. Dutch Protestants
trample on the Cross whenever they land in Japan for the purpose of
trade, III., 658; V., 402. Discovery of the descendants of the first Japanese
Christians, V., 408. Indifference of the Western governments toward
Japanese Christianity, 420. The native priesthood in Japan, 424, 429.
Statistics of the Japanese Church in 1895, 428. The religious future of
Japan, 430.

JE FUMI. The formal apostasy of Dutch Protestants in Japan, V., 402, 403, 405.’

JERUSALEM. An Anglo-Prussian endeavor to create a Lutherano-Anglicano-
Calvinist “bishop” for the Holy City, V., 458.

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705

JESUITS. Their colonies of Indians (“Reductions”) in Paraguay, IV., 447. Their
labors in Japan, V., 392. Their conduct in the matter of the Chinese and
Malabaric Rites, VI., 671. The preludes tc their suppression, »IV., 439. The
inconsistent allegations of the Parliament of Paris, 440. The fable of the
Monita Sacra, or “Secret Counsels” of the Society, 441. Persecution and
abolition in Portugal, 446. Abolition in Prance, 456; although the Jesuits
of the Province of Paris promise that they will henceforth teach Gallican-
lsm, 459. Persecution and abolition in Spain, 468. Abolition in the Two
Sicilies and in Parma, 471. In Austria, 476. Final and total abolition of the
Society by Pope Clement XIV., 472. Explanation of the continuance of the
Jesuits as such In Russia and in Prussia, 493. Absurdities »and wickedness
of Crdtineau-Joly when he treats of this suppression, 443, 476, 491, 497.
Restoration of the Society by Pope Pius VII., V., 61. Made a victim of
Bismarck’s “War for Civilization”, VI., 13. Its experience of the Third
French Republic, 118, 119, 130.

JESUITESSES. Condemned by Pope Urban VIII., IV., 54.

JEW, THE WANDERING. First traces and probable meaning of the legend,
VI., 502.

JEWS. Their condition in Poland when Poland was a nation, V., 142. In
enslaved Poland and in Russia, VI., 290, in Note. In Austria-Hungary,
265, in Note. Dcellinger’s opinion, 423.

JOACHIM, ABBOT. His errors concerning the Trinity, II., 362, in Note.

JOAN OF ARC. Her account of her visions, III., 55. Her campaign, 61. Her
capture, and her sale to the English, 64. Her mock trial, 66. The trick
of the substituted recantation, 72. The English trap for the ruin of the
Maid, 73. Her accusation of Cauchon, 74. The catastrophe, 76. The
rehabilitation,* 77. Ungard’s English prejudices lead *him to calumniate
the Maid, 82. Should the glory of Joan be given to the royal concubine,
Agnes Sorel? 83. The alleged connection of the Church with the mur-
der of Joan, 83. Prevalent ignorance concerning the Maid, 86. The super-
natural evident in her public career. 89. The predictions of Merlin, 89.
l*he strange ability of the Maid as a military strategist, 90. The calumnies
of Voltaire, 92; IV., 530. The imminent glory of the sweet child of Dom-
remy. III., 93.

JOAN, THE ALLEGED POPESS. Contrary judgments of Protestant writers.
II., 40. Pretended testimony for the truth of the fable, 41. Intrinsic marks
of its own falsity presented by the story, 44. Refuted by chronology, 48.
Probable origin of the yarn, 52.

JOHN X., POPE. His character and his murder, II., 161, in Note.

JOHN XII., POPE. His pretended deposition by the emperor, Otho I., II.. 114.

JOHN XXII., POPE. His private opinion concerning the Beatific Vision, II., 498.
He condemns the Fraticelll, 500. His struggle with Louis the Bavarian,
502. Sismondlan and other Protestant lies concerning his character, 506.

JOHN, King of England. See INNOCENT III.

JOSEPH II., Holy Rom. Emp. His boorishness toward the General of the
Jesuits, IV., 475. His quasi-schismatical enterprises, 683. He Protestantizes
the children of mixed marriages in Hungary. VI., 242. His experience with
the Congregation of Rites, 454.

JOSEPH, FRIAR. The “ alter ego” of Richelieu. His ability and sanctity, IV., 64.

JULIAN THE APOSTATE. His career, I., 178. Vain attempt of Incredulism to
ridicule the prodigy which attended his effort to rebuild the Temple of
Jerusalem, 183. 0

JULIUS II., POPE. Variously judged. III., 257. He was not a mere Mecmnas In
tiara, 261. The meaning of his cry, “Out of Italy with the barbarians!”, 262.

T'ANT, EMMANUEL. His philosophical theories. V., 368.

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706 STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

KEBLE, JOHN. The prime author of the Oxford Movement, V., 436. His ser-
mon on National Apostasy, 439.

KORAN. Its chief doctrinal points, I., 455. Its innumerable shameless untruths,
458. Its constant redolence of gross ignorance, 459.

LABOR QUESTION. Teachings of Pope Leo XIII., VI., 362.

LACORDAIRE. His early career, V., 272. The Avenir, 285. At La Chdnaie, 292.
Conferences at Notre Dame, 294.

LA LUZERNE, CARD. Refutation of his assertion that General Councils have
examined juridically the decrees of Roman Pontiffs, I., 481.

LAMENNAIS, Fl£LICIT& His early career, V., 280. The “Essay on Indiffer-
ence", 281, 283. The Avenir, 285. Lamennais has an audience with Pope
Gregory XVI., 289. Papal condemnation of the Avenir, 291. The "Words
of a Believer”, 296. The catastrophe. 297. Death of Lamennais, 298. Hia
Satanic pride, 300. His philosophy Pantheistic, 302.

LAMORICIERE. His campaign of Castelfldardo, V., 540. Such campaigns do
not ill become the servitors of the Vicar of the Prince of Peace, II., 140.

LANGTON, STEPHEN, CARD. Consecrated by Innocent III. as Archbishop of
Canterbury, II.*, 337. Retaliations by King John, and interdict of England,
339. John submits, and becomes a vassal of the Holy See, 340.

LAUNOY. Styled “the un-nicher of the saints". He denies the sanctity of Pope
St. Stephen I., because of the Pontiff’s action in. the case of St. Cyprian, I.,
140. He opines that according to the Fourth Lateran Council Easter Con-
fession must be made to one’s parish-priest, II., 369, in Note. Launoy was
a favorite of the Protestant polemics of his day, I., 353, in Note.

LAVALETTE, ANTOINE, S. J. Injures the Society of Jesus by his unauthorized
commercial speculations in the Antilles, IV., 457.

LAVIGERIE, CARD., Archbishop of Carthage. He “rallies" to the French
Republic in deference to the sentiments of Leo XIII., VI., 207. His anti-
slavery apostolate, 301.

LEABHAR BREAC. The oldest MS. treating of Irish Church History, I., 316.

LEAGUE, THE FRENCH. Attitude of the Holy See toward it. III., 386'.

LEDOCHOWSKI, CARD. A victim of Bismarck’s “War for Civilization”, VI.,
20, 23, 33.

LBGNANO, BATTLE OF. One of the great decisive battles of history, II., 280,
In Note.

LEIBNITZ. His controversy with Bossuet, IV., 377. His real belief, 393.

LEO I., ST., POPE. His Dogmatic Epistle to Flavian of Constantinople written
because of the appeal of Eutyches to the Holy See, I., 331. This letter wa?
not examined Juridically by the synodals of Chalcedon, 337.

LEO III., ST., POPE. Founds the Holy Roman Empire, II., 24. Question as to
the utility of his action, 25. See EMPIRE, HOLY ROMAN.

LEO IX., ST., POPE. He resists the Norman invaders of his dominions, II., 137.
Battle of Civitella, 139. Civitella compared with Castelfldardo, 140.

LEO X., POPE. His early career, 275. His literary and artistic merits, 279. Hia
treaty with Francis I., 283. The conspiracy of Cardinal PetruccI, 286. The
Pontiff tries to incite a Crusade, 289. His relations with the emperor,
Charles V., 294. His attitude toward Luther, 297. He was not a “great
Pope”, 298. False charges of Ranke against him, 299. His rebuke to a
transmuter of metals, VI., 531.

LEO XIII., POPE. His election, VI., 139. His early life, 143. His nunciature in
Belgium, 148. Declares his determination to uphold the temporal sover-
eignty of the Pope-King, 154. His mediation in the affair of the Caroline
Islands, 167. Institutes a hierarchy in Hindustan, 170. The matter of the
nunciature in Pekin, 173. The “New Schism” among the Armenians, 175.
The so-called “conversion” of the baby prince-royal of Bulgaria. 178. The
Encyclicals of this Pontiff, 181. His reasons for his renewal of the con-

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707

demnations of Freemasonry, 186. His admonitions concerning so-called
“Liberalism”, 188. His relations with the Third French Republic, 203.
His attitude toward Home Rule in Ireland, 216. His reiteration of the
olden decision on the invalidity of Anglican “Orders”, 226. His course
during the Masonlco-Judso-Calvinlst campaign in Austria-Hungary, 236.
His relations with Germany, 266. The phenomenal boorishness of Prince
Henry of Prussia and of Herbert von Bismarck In the Pontifical apartments,
273. His relations with Russia, 283. His attitude toward the educational
question in Belgium, 310. His encouragement of the anti-slavery Crusade
of Cardinal Lavigerie, 290. His treatment of the school-question in the
United States of America, 319. His condemnation of so-called “Ameri-
canism” not fatuous or Quixotic, 334. His attitude toward Socialism, 364.
Toward the Knights of Labor, 367. Judgments on this Pontiff, 194.

LEO OF OSTIA. His identity, II., 247, in Note.

LEO THE ARMENIAN. Resuscitates Iconoclasm, I., 493.

LEO THE ISAURIAN. Starts the Iconoclast heresy, I., 466.

LEPERS. Their lot in the Middle Age, VI., 666.

LERINS, MONKS OF. Most of them, including St. Vincent, were Semipelagians,
I., 263.

LEROUX, PETER. His philosophy, V., 381.

LETI, GREGORIO. His buffoonesque “Life” of Sixtus V., III., 636.

LIBERIAN CATALOGUE (Of the Popes). Asserts the Roman Pontificate of St.
Peter, I., 14.

LIBERIUS, POPE. Not a heretic, I., 220.

LIBERTIES OF THE GALLIC AN CHURCH. Meaning of this phrase, IV., 230.

LITTRlS. His character and conversion, V., 364 ; 385, In Note.

LOMBARDI, GIACOMO. His false mysticism, IV., 197.

LOMBARD LEAGUE. Its origin, II., 274. Pope Alexander III. not blamable for
his negotiation for a separate peace, 282.

LOUIS IX., ST., King of France. His character and reign, VI., 614. He was
not the author of the Pragmatic Sanction issued by Charles VII., III., 170.
Refutation of the calumnies of Michelet, VI., 639.

LOUIS XI., King of France. His contest with Pope Sixtus IV., III., 192. His
character, VI., 624.

LOUIS XIV., King of France. His dissensions with the Holy See, IV., 200. He
believed in Papal Infallibility, 209. His alleged saying “I am the State”
supposititious and baseless, 216, in Note. The French bishops chiefly
blamable for the king's differences with Rome, 217, 223. Justification and
consequences of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 271. The influence
of Mme. de Malntenon, 291.

LOUIS OF BAVARIA. His schism, II., 602.

LOURDES. The miraculous nature of its prodigies, VI., 455.

LUKE, ST., EVANGELIST. His silence regarding the Roman Pontificate of
St. Peter n« argument against that fact, I., 7.

LUTHER. Begins his agitation, III., 303. The 96 Theses, 304. Declares his sub--
mis8iveness to the Pontifical authority, 305. Excommunicated, 307. His-,
translation of the Bible Into a vernacular not the first, by many centuries/.
310. He ridicules Henry VIII., 312. He causes the Peasants’ War, 314. He*
“marries” Catharine Bora, 315. His inconsistencies, 319. He sanctions-
polygamy, 320; VI., 666. His character, III., 325. Reasons for his success
as an Innovator, 326. He contributed in no way to the Renaissance, 328.
He condemned the Copernican system, IV., 84.

MAfBH-LENE. SYNOD OF. Sentiments of St. Cummian in the matter of the
Easter Controversy, I., 115.

MAGI, THE THREE. Their Identity, VI., 497.

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HI8TORY.

MAHOMET II. Takes Constantinople, III., 144. Writes to Pope Nicholas V., 146.

MAIMBOURO. His lamentations over the end of the "Babylonian Captivity",
II., 496. His defence of the Avignon Idea, 641.

MAINTENON, Mme. de. She did not procure or even counsel the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, IV., 291. Her career and character, 294. Her mar-
riage to Louis XIV., 296. Dcellinger’s judgment, VI., 423.

Ttf AITLAND, Historian. Judged by Abp. Martin Spalding, II., 7, in Note.

MALABARIC RITES. Question of their toleration by the Jesuits, VI., 676,
in Note.

MALAORIDA, GABRIEL, S. J. His trial and execution, IV., 462.

MANICHEANS. Origin and doctrines, I., 37.

MANNING, CARD. His conversion, V., 474. His Christian Socialism, VI., 364,
in Note.

MARCELLINUS, POPE, ST. His alleged idolatry, VI., 610.

MARCION. His heresy, I., 32. His reason for enjoining absolute continence on
all, 33, in Note.

MARCUS AURELIUS, Rom. Emp. Persecutes the Christians, I., 49.

MARGARET OF VALOIS. Her eroticism and Calvinism, III., 365, 371.

MARIANUS SCOTUS. His unreliability, II., 42.

MARK OF EPHESUS. Chief champion of the Greek Schism at the Council of
Florence, III., 126, 127, 130, 131.

MARONITES. Never Monothelites, I., 428, in Note.

MAROZIA, Duchess of Tuscany. Procures the election of her paramour to the
Papacy, II., 162.

MARTIAL, ST. His mission In Gaul, I., 88.

MARTIN I., POPE, ST. Persecuted by Constans II., I., 423.

MARY, QUEEN. Checks the Reformation In England, III., 474.

"MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY. It was not prompted by religious
zeal, 397. Cardinals Birague and De Retz had nothing to do with it. 400.
It was an affair of worldly policy, 403. It was meant to be restricted to
Paris, 405. It was not long premeditated, 408. The number of its victims
grossly exaggerated, 415. The popular version of the remorseful death of
Charles IX. is absolutely false, 418.

MATTHEW ( alitcr OF) PARIS. His unreliability, II., 377, in Note.

MAXIMIN, Rom. Emp. Persecutes the Christians, I., 53.

MAZZINI. Founds "Young Italy” and dominates the Alta Vendlta, V., 600.
Decrees the assassination of Count Rossi, 515. His responsibility for the
horrors of the Roman “Republic" of 1849, 521. He forces Victor Emmanuel
to seize Rome, 547. Judged by Proudhon, 637.

"MEL AN CTHON. Drafts the Confession of Augsburg, III., 318. Is upbraided by
Luther for his lukewarmness in the Protestant cause, 320. He condemns
the heliocentric system, IV., 84.

MELCHIADES, ST., POPE. H!s decision against the Donatists was regarded
as irrefragable, I., 192.

MENANDER. His heresy, I., 28.

MERLIN. His predictions of the deeds and the murder of Joan of Arc, III., 89.

METHODISM, EARLY. Its persecuting spirit, V., 180. See WESLEY.

MEYENDORF. Russian ambassador. Insults Pope Pius IX., V., 113.

MICHAEL THE STUTTERER. Greek emp. Testifies to the superstitions of'
the Greeks of his day, I., 498.

MICHAEL OF CESENA. A leader of the Franciscan "Spirituals", II., 501.

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI. His orthodoxy beyond suspicion. III., 460.

'MIDDLE AGE. Not a barbarous epoch, II., 3. Not one of Ignorance, 7. Ser-
vices of the mediaeval monastic orders, 10. Medimval universities and
schools, 13. The mediaeval clergy did not keep learning to themselves. 15. It
ds untrue (hat the mediaeval nobles were generally ignorant, 16. Super-

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709

stitlon was not rampant or even extraordinary, 19. The alleged panic of
the year 1000, 20. The Middle Age was a period of gestation, 22. It was
not excessively addicted to astrology, alchemy, and sorcery, VI., 629;
Trades-Unions were the order of the day, 637. Business features of
mediaeval days, 646. Let the modern miner reflect on the condition of his.
medlaeval brother, 660. The lot of the mediaeval peasant, 551.
Mediaeval serfdom, 655. Mediaeval hospitals, 560. Mediaeval treatment of
lepers, 566. A typical mediaeval bishop, 571. Mediaeval legends of the*
saints, 579.

MIGUEL, DOM. King of Portugal. Story of his dethronement, V., 264.

MILL, JOHN STUART. Detested the royal supervision of English Protest-
antism, V., 435.

MILNER, JOHN. Chief champion of English Catholic Emancipation, V., 191,.
198, 201.

MINSK, NUNS OF. Their martyrdom under Nicholas I., V., 145.

MIOLLIS, Bishop of Dlgne. Travestied by Victor Hugo in the character of
“Myriel” in Lcs Miserables, V., 32, 42, in Notes.

MIRACLE'S. Their, place In History, VI., 448. Those of Lourdes, 454.

MOHAMMED. His hatred of learning, I., 459. He never pretended to have
miraculous power, 461.

MOLlilRE. His “Tartuffe” was probably directed against the Jansenists, not
against the Jesuits, IV., 165, in Note.

MOLINOS. Apostle of Quietism, IV., 306.

MOMMSEN, THEODORE, German epigraphlst. His boorishness In the pres-
ence of Pope Leo XIII., VI., 274.

MONOTHELITES. Their doctrines, I., 419. They did not vitiate the Acts of
the Sixth Gen. Council, 428.

MONTAIGNE. Rejects the Copernican system, IV., 86, In Note.

MONTALEMBERT. His early career, V., 320. Combats the University monopoly;
323. Defends the Jesuits in the Chamber, 333. His attitude toward
Napoleon III., 337. His invention and proper conception of the formula.
“A Free Church in a Free State”, 340. His attitude toward the proposed
definition of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility, 342. His writings, 346. His
endeavor to convert Father Hyacinth, 346. Meaning of his saying, “Catholic
above all”, 348.

MONTANUS. His heresy, I., 35.

MONTI DI PIETA. “Mountains of Charity”, or Christian pawnbroking-shops.
Their Institution, III., 271.

MORENO, GARCIA. President of Equador, the “Modern St. Louis”, and victim
of Freemasonry, VI., 64.

MORTARA. His withdrawal from his Jewish parents’ custody by order of
Pius IX., V., 607, In Note.

MOST CHRISTIAN KING. Proudest title of the French monarchs. Its an-
tiquity, III., 369, in Note.

MOURAWIEFF, MICHAEL. His atrocities in Poland, V., 109.

MUN, ALBERT DE. His combat for political unity among French Catholics,,
VI., 206.

MURATORI. His works condemned by the Spanish Inquisition, and Pope Bene-
dict XIV. condemns the Grand-Inquisitor’s action, III., 188, in Note.

MYSTICS, FALSE. Of the seventeenth century, IV., 196, 304.

NAPOLEON. Tries to dominate the Conclave of 1800, V., 3. He himself did not1
restore, but he contributed to the restoration of religion in France, 14. His
Concordat with Pius VTI., 15. His rupture with the Holy See, 30. He is
excommunicated, although not by name, 33, 36. He did not strike the*

. Pontiff. 45. His pretended divorce, 56. He founds the University of France*

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STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

on the ruins of the University of Paris, 324. His connection with Free-
masonry, 480.

NAPOLEON III. He deserves no credit for the restoration of the Pope-King
in 1849, V., 521. His interview with the assassin, Orsini, 530, in Note.
Tells Cialdini to “act quickly” in the matter of the invasion of the Papal
States, 540. He betrays Lamorlcidre, 541. His fatuousness in “making
Italy”, 547, in Note.

NEANDER. Asserts the Roman residence of St. Peter, I., 3.

NECTARIUS OF CONSTANTINOPLE. His abolition of “public confession” no
comfort to Protestants, I., 166.

NERO, Rom. Emp. His persecution of the Christians, I., 43.

NESTORIUS. His errors, I., 277. Condemned at Ephesus, 280. Doctrines of
the modern Nestorians, 286. Their false appreciation by Protestant
polemics, 287. The “Christians of St. Thomas”, 288.

NEWMAN, CARD. Joins Keble and Hurrell Froude in the Oxford Movement,
y., 436. Starts the “Tracts for the Times”, 443. His sermons at St.
Mary’s, 447. His motive in writing “Tract 90”, 455. His conversion, 468.

NICE. First Gen. Council. Its convocation, not by Constantine, but by Pope
St. Sylvester, I., 201. The Pontiff presided, by means of his legates, 202.
Papal supremacy not subverted by the Sixth NIcene Canon, 206.

NICHOLAS V., POPE. Early career, III., 140. His efforts against the Turks.
142. The conspiracy of Porcaro, 147. Literary merits of this Pontiff, 149.

NICHOLAS THE DEACON. His heresy, I., 30.

NICHOLAS I., Czar. His virulent persecution of Catholics, V., 93. Scathingly
rebuked by Pope Gregory XVI., 101.

NICHOLAS II., Czar. Persecutes the Catholics, V., 143.

.NINTH GEN. COUNCIL. FIRST LATERAN. First (Ecumenical Council held
In the West, II., 266. The Prefect of Rome partially relegated to his
proper place, 267. Monks forbidden to administer the Last Sacraments, and
ordered to contribute their share to the support of Church and State, 268.

NOAILLES, LOUIS- ANTOINE, CARD. Archbishop of Paris. His weakness
and tergiversations in the matter of the Bull “Unigenitus”, 347. Finally
accepts the Bull, 366.

NOVATIAN. First Anti-Pope, I., 127.

NOVATUS. Instigates the Novatlan Schism, I., 128.

NUNCIO, PAPAL. His powers not simply diplomatical, VI., 166.

NUNS. See VIRGINS.

'OAKLEY, CANON. Judged by Newman, V., 450.

OCCAM, WILLIAM, A leader of the Franciscan “Spirituals”, II., 501.

'OCHINO (TOMMASINI) O. M. Cap. His apostasy and theological vagaries, III.,
443. Denounced as a lying and lustful wretch by Bullinger and Beza, 446.

»t)’CONNELL, DANIEL. Thanks Milner for his opposition to the Veto Bill, V.,
201. Takes the lead in Irish Catholic politics, 206. Unjustly censured for
ordinary courtesy to George IV., 217. The Clare election, 228. Absurdly
charged with Freemasonry, 236. Judged by Ventura, Lacordaire, Veuillot,
and Cantff, 236.

“OLD CATHOLICS”. Origin and history, V., 607. See DCELLINGER.

OLIER DE VERNEUIL. Founder of the Society of Salnt-Sulplce. His career
and character. IV., 169. Judged by St. Vincent de Paul, 179.

OLIVA. PETER JOHN, O. S. F. Condemnation of his errors by the Fifteenth
Gen. Council, II., 447.

OLIVAINT, PETER, S. J. Murdered by the Paris Communists of 1871, VI., 102.

ORDEALS. Never authorized or approved by the Church, III., 241, in Note.

dRDIBARII. A sect of the Waldenses. Their peculiar errors, II., 311.

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GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX.

711

ORGANIC ARTICLES. Surreptitiously added by Napoleon to his Concordat
with Pius VII., V., 23. Abrogated by Louis XVIII., 26.

ORIGEN. His heterodoxy problematical, I., 379.

ORTLIBENSES. A sect of the Waldenses. Peculiar errors, II., 311.

OTHO OF FRISENGEN. His judgment on the tenure of the Holy Roman
Emperors, II., 29.

OTHO IV. Holy Rom. Emp. See INNOCENT III.

OXFORD MOVEMENT. Origin and history, V., 434. Anglican judgments con-
cerning its importance, 475.

OZANAM. Founds the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, V., 308. His course
at the University, 312. Value of his writings, 319.

PALATINE LIBRARY. Not burned by Pope Gregory the Great, I., 389.

PALEOLOGUS, MICHAEL. Gk. Emp. Abjures the Photian Schism, II., 381.

PALMARIS SYNOD. Refuses to judge Pope Symmachus, I., 351.

PALMER, WILLIAM. His calibre, and his conversion, V., 440, in Note.

PALMERSTON. His impudence to Pope Gregory XVr., 243. His revolutionary
role as “Grand Orient of the Orients”, 511. He was the efficient cause of
Garibaldi’s Marsala expedition, 535.

PANIC OF A. D. 1000. A mere myth, II., 20.

PAN-SLAVISM. Its mission, V.. 109, in Note. Socialism its tool, VI., 391.

PARAGUAY, “REDUCTIONS” OF. Colonies of Indians, formed and protected
by the Jesuits, IV., 448.

PARKER, MATTHEW. Elizabethan Incumbent of the See of Canterbury, III.,
477. Invalidity of his “consecration”, from a historical point of view, 499.
Invalidity, from the theological standpoint, VI., 230.

PARRIS, A Dutch Unitarian, burnt by order of Cranmer, III., 472.

PASCAL. His early career, IV., 144. His scientific attainments, 151. His alleged
skepticism, 152. His alleged eroticism, 157. His “Provincial Letters” a
tissue of Immortal lies and of sublime forgeries, 169.

PASCHASIUS. His explanation of the Real Presence, II., 108.

PASSAGINI. Their heresies, II., 313.

PATARINES. A sect of the Waldenses. Their peculiar errors, II., 311.

PATRICIAN OF ROME. Meaning of the title, as given by the Popes to Pepin
and Charlemagne, I., 508; II., 36.

PATRICK, ST., APOSTLE OF IRELAND. His apostolate, I., 289. His doctrine
was thoroughly “papistical", 293.

PAUL, ST., APOSTLE. He had no Joint jurisdiction with St. Peter in the
Bishopric of Rome, much less was he sole Bishop of Rome, I., 20.

PAUL OF THE CROSS, ST. His esteem for the Society of Jesus, IV., 483.

PAUL II., POPE. He was not a foe to learning, III., 176.

PAUL IV., POPE. He did not approve the Protestant “Book of Common
Prayer”, III., 476, in Note.

PAULICIANS. Their Manlchelsm, I., 463. Their opposition to the veneration
of the Cross was an innovation, 464.

PAZZI, CONSPIRACY OF THE. The extent of the participation of Pope Sixtus
IV., III., 187.

PEACE, LETTERS OF. Given by the early martyrs. Their meaning, I.. 122.

PEARSON. Anglican incumbent of Chester. Asserts the Roman residence of
St. Peter, I., 9, in Note.

PEASANTS’ WAR. Luther’s connection with it, III., 314.

PEDRO I., Emperor of Brazil. Grand-Master of Brazilian Masonry, VI., 50.

PEDRO II., Emperor of Brazil. A tool of Freemasonry In its persecution of the
Brazilian Church, VI., 52.

PEEL, ROBERT. Abandons the claim to a right of veto on Catholic episcopal
nominations, V., 202. He Introduces a Bill for Catholic Emancipation, 231.

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712 STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

PELAGIANISM. Its doctrines, I., 254. Condemned by Pope Innocent I., 257.
This pontifical action shows that Papal definitions In matters of fait h were
then regarded as irreformable, 259.

PENANCE, PUBLIC. Its nature among the early Christians, I., 160. The sys-
tem obtained for twelve centuries, 164. Public, not private and Sacra-
mental Confession, prohibited by Nectarius of Constantinople, 166.

PEONS, MEXICAN. Their lot far happier than that of laborers in other
countries, VI., 382, in Note.

PEPIN THE SHORT, King of the Franks. Spurns the bribes of Copronymus in
the matter of Iconoclasm, I., 471. His so-called “donation" to the Holy
See, 507. It was rather a restitution, 511, in Note.

PERSECUTIONS, EARLY CHRISTIAN. Vain endeavors of Voltaire, Gibbon,
Basnage, Dodwell, etc., to belittle their woes, and to excuse their authors,
I., 45, 49, 53, 57.

PETER, ST., ROMAN PONTIFICATE OF. Position of its denlers, I.. 1. It is
proved by the testimony of St. Paul, 5. By that of Pope St. Clement I., 8.
By that of St. Irenseus, 9. By that of Tertullian, Hegeslppus, and Diony-
sius of Corinth, 10. By that of Sts. Cyprian, Jerome, and Augustine, 11.
By that of the later Fathers, 12. By the ancient “Catalogues of the
Pontiffs", 13. By the vivid and absolute tradition of the Roman people, 14.
A belief In it oould not have arisen from the ambition of the Roman
Pontiffs, 16. The question of chronology, 17. Sts. Peter and Paul were not
co-bishops of Rome, 19.

PETER “LEONIS". Usurper of the Papal throne, II., 269, In Note.

PETER OF VAUX-CERNAY, Summarizes the errors of the Alblgenses, II., 351.

PETER OF CASTELNAU. Papal legate, murdered by the Alblgenses, II., 354.

PETER MARTYR (of Verona) ST. Martyred by the Patarines, III., 446, in Note.

PETER MARTYR VERMIGLIO. Apostatises, and Cranmer gives him a chair
of theology in Oxford, III., 446. After consultation with Calvin, he allows
a married apostate to take a second “wife", because the legitimate spouse
remains a Catholic, 448.

PETIT, JOHN. His defence of the doctrine Justifying tyrannicide is condemned
by the Council of Constance, III., 39.

PETRUCCI, CARD. Executed for his attempted murder of Pope Leo X., III., 285.

PHILIP AUGUSTUS, King of France. Seo INNOCENT III.

PHILOSOPHUMENA. Of Mt. Athos, not written by St. Hippolytus, I., 13,
in Note.

PHOTIUS. See SCHISM, GREEK.

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA. Sincerely orthodox at heart, praised by Innocent
VIII., but expresses views which are condemned by the Holy See, III., 200.
His sanctity, 201.

PIETISTS. German Protestant false mysticlsts, V., 363. The Jansenists of
Protestantism, 365.

PIFRES (PATRINS). A sect of the Alblgenses, II., 350, in Note.

PIMODAN, GEN. DE. Assassinated at Castelfldardo, V., 534.

PISA, COUNCIL OF. Assembled for a termination of the Great Western
Schism, III., 18. Deposes the rival Pontiffs, Gregory XII. and Benedict
XIII., 21. Election of Balthassar Cossa, 22. Arguments for and against
the oecumeniclty of this Council, 24.

PISTOJA. Pseudo-Synod, IV., 592. Pius VI. condemns its Jansenistlc and
Josephist doctrines, 597.

PITT, The Younger. His course In regard to English Catholic Emancipation,
V., 169, 186, 192.

PIUS II., POPE. Early career, III., 160. Urges a Crusade. 161. His Bull of
Retractations, and his condemnation of all appeals from a Papal decision,
167. His condemnation of the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., 170.

Digitized by L^ooQle

GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX.

71»

PIUS VI., POPE. His character and election, IV., 562. His dissensions with the
court of Naples, 567. His Imprisonment by the French Directory, and his
death, 575. His resistance to the quasi-schismatic enterprises of Joseph

11., 588, 600. His condemnation of the Civil Constitution of t$e Clergy in
France, 610.

PIUS VII., POPE. Tricks of Bonaparte and of the German emperor in reference
to the Conclave of 1800, V., 2. Early career of Gregorio Chiaramonti, 10.
Pettiness and boorishness of the German emperor toward the new Pontiff,
13. The Concordat with France, 14. The “Organic Articles” surreptitiously
added to the Concordat by Napoleon, 23. The consecration of Napoleon as
emperor, 27. The imprisonment of the Pontiff, 33. The extorted Concordat,
and the firmness of Consalvl, 45. The Pontiff is restored to his capital, 47.
His hospitality to the Bonaparte family, 50, 243. His character, 53. His
course in the matter of the pretended divorce of Napoleon, 58. His refusal
to nullify the Jerome Bonaparte-Patterson marriage, 65. His decision in
the question of the English royal veto on episcopal nominations, 208.

PIUS VIII., POPE. Condemns the Prussian law which forbade the exaction of
a promise of fidelity to Catholic conditions from a Protestant party to a
mixed marriage, V., 257.

PIUS IX., POPE. His early career, V., 605. His election, 509. Grants a Con-
stitution to his subjects, 512. The assassination of hi& prime-minister.
Count Rossi, 614. The flight to Gaeta, 518. The restoration, 520. Cavour
shows his hand at the Congress of Paris, 525. The campaign of Castel-
fldardo, 540. The Pontiff gives the lie to an envoy from His Sardinian
Majesty, 648. The seizure of Rome by the Piedmontese, 549. Pius IX.
refuses a pension from the usurpers, 551. The definition of the dogma of
the Immaculate Conception, 558. The “Syllabus”, 561. The alleged Free-
masonry of Pius IX., 564. His death, 569. His remains outraged by the
Italian Unitarians, VI., 156.

PLATINA. His declamations against Pope Paul II., III., 176.

PLiBTHO. His schismatic effrontery in reference to the Council of Florence,-

111., 126, 139.

PLINY THE YOUNGER. Testifies to the rapid spread of Christianity, I., 59.

POBBDON QSTZEF. Procurator of the Russian Holy Synod, and prime instiga-
tor of the persecution of Catholics, V., 140, 143.

POLAND. Her conversion, V., 73. Catholicism and patriotism are synonymous-
in Poland, 75. Origin and significance of the United Greek Rite among
the Catholics of Poland, 78. Sufferings of the Polish Catholics under the-
infamous Catharine II., 80. The practical apostasy of Slestrzencewicz, 82.
Falsehoods and absurdities of Dimitri Tolstoy, procurator of the Holy
Synod under Alexander I, in the matter of Polish Catholicism, 88, 89, 94,
95, 115, 116, 129, 136. Paul I. and Alexander I. comparatively tolerant, -92.
Nicholas I. rivals Catharine II. as a persecutor, 93. The betrayal of the'
United Greeks by Siemaszko, 94. The cruelties of Nicholas I. revealed to
the Western world by Pope Gregory XVI., 100. The meeting of the Pontiff
and the autocrat, 101. The persecution under the “gentle” Alexander II.,
103. Ferocity of Michael Mourawleff, 109. The protests of Pius IX., and
the Insult offered him by the Russian ambassador, Meyendorf, 112. “Russi-
fication” not justified by the “Polonlzatlon” of the olden time, 122. The
Uniates of Galicia frequently accomplices of the destroyers of the Uniates
of Russian Poland, 127. The Russifying enterprises of Kuzlemskl and
Marcellus Poplel, 128. Alexander III. at first tolerant, but yields to the'
influence of Pobedonostzef, and nearly rivals Nicholas I. as a persecutor,
139. The massacre of Krozd, 141. Nicholas II. begins his reign with a
wholesale deportation and exile of Polish priests, but there are hopes of
amelioration, 143.

Digitized by i^ooQle

714 STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

POLYCARP, ST. His Epistle to the Philipplans, I., 74.

POLYCRATES OF EPHESUS. Obeys Pope St. Victor I. in the matter of the
Easter Controversy, I., 24.

POMBAL, SEBASTIAN CARVALHO, Marquis of. His character, IV., 445. De-
nounces the pretended crimes of the Jesuits to Pope Benedict XIV., 446.
His accusations refuted by the history of the “Reductions” of Paraguay,
448. Resolves to imitate Henry VIII, if otherwise he cannot destroy the
Jesuits, 451. Banishes the Jesuits, 452. Executes Father M&l&grlda, 454.
His rupture with Pope Clement XIII., who supports the Society, 455.

POMPONAZIO. Contends that the immortailty of the soul cannot be proved by
reason, but afterward retracts this view, III., 300.

POMPONIO LETO. Leader of the Italian Humanists. Eccentric, but orthodox,

111., 178, In Note.

PONTIFICAL BOOK. “Diary of the Popes”. Its value, I., 226.

POOR MEN OF LYONS. The original Waldenses, and irreprehensible, II., 308.

POPESS. See JOAN.

PORT- ROYAL (of Paris and Les Champs). Jansenlst shrine and headquarters,
IV., 115, in Note. Its spirit, 116, 133, 141, 160, 166.

POSITIVISM. Not originated by Comte, but as old as Enesidemus and Sextus
the Empiric, V., 385. The Positivism of Littrd, 385, in Note. That of
Proudhon, of certain Liberal clerics, of some would-be scientists, and of
some would-be artists, 386.

PRAGMATIC SANCTION. Meaning, III., 170. The Sanction ascribed to St.
Louis of France was never Issued by him, 171.

PROPERTY, RIGHTS OF. Theory of Proudhon, VI., 357. Of Robert Owen,
356. Of Fourier, V., 382. Teachings of Leo XIII., VI., 362.

PROTESTANTISM. Its birth, IIL, 304. Its propagation, very differently from
that of the Church, was assisted by the spirit of the world, 326, 333. It
had nothing to do with the “rebirth” of learning, 328. Philosophy owes it
nothing, 330. It did not even give to men a new freedom to discuss the
doings of churchmen, 331. Its triumph in England, 463. Its efforts to
Intrench itself in France, 368. Its attempts to seduce Italy, 441. Its re-
jection entailed on Italy no loss of worldly prosperity, 461. See LUTHER.

PRUSSIANS. Originally a Slavic, not a Teutonic tribe, IV., 374, in Note. Not
converted from barbarism and paganism until the thirteenth century, II.,
10, in Note.

- PULCHERIA, ST. Roman Empress. Her influence over Theodosius II., I., 280,
in Note.

PURGATORY. Formed an article of faith for the early Anglo-Saxon Church,

1., 406.

PUSEYISM. See OXFORD MOVEMENT.

QUESNEL, PASQUIER. His “Moral Reflections” the occasion of the Bull
“Unigenitu8”, IV., 346. Condemnation of 101 of his propositions, 351.
See “UNIGENITUS”.

QUIETISM. A legacy from the Origenlstic mystics of the fourth century, IV.,
304. Vagaries of Molinos, 305. His theories condemned by Innocent XI.,
306. The super-exaltation of Mme. Guyon, 308. Her erotic blasphemies.
309. She is unmasked by Bossuet, 314. This question not one of mere
words on unintelligible matters, 323.

RANKE. His Injustices toward Pope Leo X., III., 299. His foolish observations
on the Council of Trent. 532. Value of his “unearthed documents” con-
cerning this Council. 534.

RATIONALISM. Its path opened by the Protestant “Pietists”, V.. 363. Aided
by the Wolflan “philosophy”, 365. The New Exegesis, 366. Champions of

Digitized by i^ooQle

GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX. 715

Rationalism, 368. French Rationalism more baneful than the German,
because more logical, 375. Semi-Rationalism of Gioberti, 388.

RATISBONNE, THE BROTHERS. Their conversion from Judaism, V., 255,
in Note.

RATRAMN OF CORBIE. His triple distinction as to the Body of Christ, I., 402.

RATTAZZI. His judgment on Leo XIII., VI., 153.

RAYMOND VI. Count of Toulouse. Protects the Albigenses, and is deposed
by Pope Innocent III., II., 352.

REFORMATION. See PROTESTANTISM.

REGALIA, QUESTION OF. For its German phase, see INVESTITURES. Its
meaning in French history, II., 386, in Note; IV., 211. The question was not
merely one of money, IV., 213. The mistake of Louis XIV. due to the
subserviency of the French bishops, 217. Justification of the course pur-
sued by Pope Innocent XI. in this matter, 21*8. The Concordat between
Pope Leo X. and Francis I. responsible for much of this trouble, 220.

REINKENS. His consecration as bishop of the “Old Catholics”, V., 614.

RELATIONS OF VENETIAN AMBASSADORS. Their value. III., 206, in Note.

RELIGIOUS ORDERS IN ENGLAND. Still prohibited by law, V., 181, in Note.

RENAISSANCE. Its pagan tendencies, III., 232. Chief lights, 329, in Note.

REVOLUTION, FRENCH, OF 1789. Judged by Mgr. Freppel, IV., 617, in Note.

RHODES, SIEGES OF. The Knights-Hospitalers, VI., 646. D’Aubusson elected
Grand-Master, 648. Repulse of Mesis Vizir, 651. L’lle-Adam Grand-Master,
657. Besieged by Sollman, 660. Rhodes capitulates, 664.

RICCI, LORENZO. General of the Jesuits. His dying protest, IV., 488.

RICCI, SCIPIO. Bishop of Pistoja. His religious Innovations, IV., 592. His
Josephlst synod at Pistoja, 594. His submission and edifying death, 599.

RICHELIEU, CARD. His eccleciastlcal character Irreproachable, IV., 274, in
Note. He did not cause the fall of Wallenstein, 64. His object in aiding
Gustavus Adolphus, 70. Withdraws his aid when the Swede refuses to
spare the Catholic princes of Germany, 74. Openly wars on Austria, 77.
His attitude during the Thirty Years War, 79.

RICHER, EDMOND. His errors, IV., 354.

RIBNZI. His career, II., 551. His character, 667.

RIMINI, COUNCIL OF. The synodals were not guilty of heresy, I., 235.

ROBERTSON, W. As a historian his spirit Is Voltairian, III., 293. He mis-
represents grievously the work of the Church in Latin America, V., 270,
in Note. Judged by Cantfi, II., 6.

ROHAN, LOUIS RENE DE, CARD. His connection with the affair of Marie
Antoinette’s diamond necklace, IV., 570.

ROSSI, PELLEGRINO. Accepts the invitation of Pius IX. to “constitutionalize”
the government of the Papal States, V., 514. His assassination, 516.

RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG. Conditions on which he became emperor, II., 380.

RUFINUS. A forerunner of Pelagianism, I., 253.

RUNCARII. A sect of the W'aldenses, II., 311.

RUSSIAN “ORTHODOX” CHURCH. Not synonymous with the schismatic
Greek either in origin, or in language, or in polity, or in government, II.,
127. Its own liturgical books admit the primacy of St. Peter and his
successors, although it refuses submission to that primacy, 128, in Note.
Its lethargy and superstition, 134. Reasons which militate against its sub-
mission to the Papacy, 135. Persecuting spirit of its Holy Synod, V., 140,
143. See POLAND.

SABELLIUS. Held that the Son and the Holy Ghost are not subsistent Persons,
but attributes or emanations of the Father. I., 37.

SACCHO, REINERIUS. A converted Waldensian bishop, II.. 308.

Digitized by i^ooQie

716 STUDIES IN CHUBCH HISTOBY.

SAGASTA, PRAXEDES. Grand-Master of Spanish Freemasonry, proposes to
Judalze Spain, VI., 46.

SAINT-CYRAN (John du Verger de K aura nine). His character as judged by
St. Vincent de Paul, IV., 118.

SAINT-SIMON, LOUIS DE. A complete expression of Jansenism, IV., 133.

SAINT-SIMON, CLAUDE DE. His phllosophlstic theories, V., 378.

SALISBURY, JOHN OF. His authority, I., 391, 392, in Note.

SAMOSATIANS. Their doctrines I., 144. See ANTIOCH, COUNCIL OF.

SANCTA CLARA, FRANCISCUS DE, O.S.F. Grants the validity of Anglican
“Orders”, and afterward denies said validity, IV., 53, in Note.

SARDICA, COUNCIL OF. General, but regarded as an appendix to that of
Nice, I., 209. This Council did not Initiate the right of appeal to the
Roman Pontiff, 212. Falsity of the Febronian interpretation of the third,
fourth, and seventh Canons, 216.

SARPI, PAOLO. His “History of the Council of Trent”, III., 621. His course
during the dissension between Pope Paul V. and Venice, IV., 9. His ortho-
doxy problematical, 13. His judgment on the alleged Monita Secreta of
the Jesuits, and his charges against the Society, 441.

SATURNINUS. Disciple of Menander. His heresy, I., 28.

SAVONAROLA. His rise, III., 230. Proclaims the necessity of purifying the
sanctuary, 233. Becomes omnipotent in Florence, 235. Disobeys the pon-
tifical command to abstain from preaching, 237. Excommunicated, 238.
Loses his influence in Florence, 239. The fiasco of the ordeal by fire, 240.
The Church never authorized or approved such ordeals, 241, in Note.
Alexander VI. tries to save the friar, 243. The Christian death of the
agitator, 245. He was not a precursor of Protestantism, 247. His intense
and orthodox piety, 249. He is praised by Saints and by Popes, 253. Rea-
sons, justifiable or foolish, for sympathy with him, 255.

SCANDERBEG (George Castriota). Helps the Hungarians to save Christendom
from the Osmanlis, III., 142, 156.

SCARAMPO, CARD. Pontifical naval commander, protects the Mediterranean
islands from Mahomet II., III., 156.

SCHELLING, FRED W. 'Banishes all objective existence in favor of the Egor
V., 371.

SCHILLER. His “History of the Thirty Years War” a platitudinous effort,
IV., 68, in Note.

SCHISM, GREEK. Its first stage under Photlus, II., 55. Its revival by Ceru-
Iarius. 123. The Schismatic Greek Church differs from the Russian
“Orthodox” in origin, language, polity, and government, 127. Attempts
of Protestants to communicate with the Schismatic Greeks, 130. The
enterprise of Cyril Lucar, 131. The submission of the Schismatics to the
Holy See does not mean their Latlnizatlon, 135, 136, in Note.

SCHISM, GREAT WESTERN. Election of Bartholomew Prlgnano as Pope*
Urban VI., II., 522. Discontent and final revolt of the French cardinals,
525. Joined by two of the Italian cardinals, they venture to “elect” a
new Pontiff, Robert of Geneva, who takes the name of Clement VII., 627.
Christendom soon divided into two “obediences”, 528. Some apposite re-
flections on the nature of this Schism, 529. The election of Urban VI.
was free, and therefore valid; therefore his successors, Boniface IX.,
Innocent VII., and Gregory XII., were legitimate Pontiffs, 632. Argu-
ments advanced by the partisans of the line of Robert of Geneva, 541.
Termination of the Schism, 548.

SCISCIDENSES. A sect of the Waldenses, II., 311.

SHAFTESBURY (Anthony Ashley Cooper), Skeptle and iadiffereotist* IV«*
291, In Note.

Digitized by LjOOQle

GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX. 717

SCOTIA. The ancient name of Ireland, the land now termed Scotland not
having been so styled before the eleventh century, I., 114.

SCOTUS ERIGENA. Not the author of the treatise on the Eucharist which
was condemned by the Synod of Vercelli in 1049, I., 316. Not to be con-
founded with Duns Scctus, ibi, in Note. Probhbly a layman, II., 108,
in Note.

SECRET, DISCIPLINE OP THE. Its nature, I., 96. It furnishes a proof of the
early Christian belief in Transubstantiatlon, 103.

SEDULIUS. Vainly cited to prove the “anti-papistical’ * doctrines of the early
Irish Church, I., 312.

SEMIPELAGIANS. Held many errors, but they were not involved in the
condemnation of Pelagianism, I., 263.

SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, Rom. Emp. Persecutes the Christians, I., 60.

SERFDOM, MEDLEVAL. It was a mere memory and a name, VI., 551.

SERVETUS. Burnt alive as a heretic by order of Calvin, III., 361. Melancthon
justifies the deed, 362.

SEVENTH GEN. COUNCIL. SECOND OF NICE. Condemns Iconoclasm, I., 473.
The synodals did not examine juridically the Letters of Pope Adrian I. to
Tharaslus and to the sovereigns Irene and Constantine, 480.

SIEMASZKO. His apostasy, and his persecution of the Ruthenlan Uniates, V.,
94. His atrocities toward the Nuns of Minsk, 146.

SIESTRZENCEWICZ. Betrays the cause of the United Greeks in Russia, and
practically apostatizes, V., 82.

SIMON JULES. Condemns the educational laws of the Third French Republic,
VI., 123, 129, 131.

SIMON MAGUS. Rather a false Messiah than a heretic, I., 26.

SINUESSA, PRETENDED SYNOD OF. Its “Acts” apocryphal, VI., 610.

SIRMIUM, THREE FORMULAS OF. So-called, but only the first was issued
by the Sirmian synodals, I., 229. If Pope Liberius signed any Slrmian
formula, he signed the first, which was perfectly orthodox, 230. The word
homoou8io8 is not found in the first formula, but the doctrine presented
Implies it, 231.

8ISTERS OF CHARITY. Founded by St. Vincent de Paul. Their prime char-
acteristics, IV., 179.

SIXTUS IV., POPE. His character, III., 185. His connection with the Con-
spiracy of the Pazzl, 186. The severity of this PontifT toward Florence was
in accordance with the Canons, 192. His relations with Louis XI. of
France, 193.

SIXTUS V., POPE. Reliability of Gregorio Leti, the apostate writer of the
buffoonesque “Life” of this PontifT, III., 636. The story of the discarded
crutches, and that of the phenomenally vigorous expectoration, are im-
possible yarns. 537. The zeal of Sixtus V. was prudent, and his severity
was not injustice, 541. As for the affairs of France, the Influence of
Sixtus over the League counterbalanced that of Philip II. of Spain, 544.
His Bull of Deposition against Henry IV., 645. His reason for refusing
the customary Papal Mass of Requiem in the case of Henry III., 549.

SLAVE-TRADE. Always condemned by the Roman Pontiffs, V., 268. Apposite
Bull of Gregory XVI., 270. The united action of Leo XIII. and Cardinal
Lavigerie against the traffic, VI., 291.

SOCIALISM. Meaning and history, VI., 364. Difference between the French and
German theories, 367. Connection with Freemasonry, 359. Teachings of
Leo XIII., 362. The right of private ownership is according to the
Natural Law, 363. Iniquity of Statolatry, 364. The question of wages, 366.

SOCINUS, FAUSTUS. His notions different from those of Arius, and from
those of many other Unitarians, III., 463.

SOCRATES. The historian. His proneness to mendacity, I., Ill, in Note.

Digitized by UjOOQle

718 STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.

SOKOLSKI. Bulgarian archimandrite, submits to the Holy See, is consecrated*
bishop, and then apostatizes, V., 131, in Note.

SORCERY, MEDIEVAL. Sorcery not peculiar to the Middle Age, VI., 534.
Witchcraft was scarcely known until nearly the close of the Middle
Age, 535.

SPECIES, HUMAN. Three of them, according to Valentinus, I., 34.

SPENER, PHILIP. Founds the Protestant school of Pietists, V., 363. Refuses
to recognize religious teaching authority In the German civil govern-
ments, 364.

SPINOLA, CRISTOFORO, O.S.F. Projects a reconciliation of the German
Lutherans with the Holy See, IV., 377.

STRAUSS, DAVID. His theory of myths as applied to the life of Jesus, V., 372.
Reply of Rousseau to the assumption that miracles are impossible, 374.

SULLY, MAURICE DE. Bishop of Paris. A typical bishop of the Middle
Age, VI., 571.

SWEDEN. Cause of Its Protestantization, IV., 68, in Note. See GUSTAVUS-
ADOLPHUS.

SYLLABUS. Collection of eighty errors already condemned by Pius IX., but
again reprobated in 1864, V., 561. It is a condemnation of the intellectual,
social, and religious heresies which are characteristic of the spirit of the
world at the present time, 563.

SYMMACHUS, ST., POPE. Not Judged by the Palmaris Synod, I., 352.

SYNESIUS. Bishop of Ptolemais. Allowed to retain his wife, II., 192.

TACITUS. Testifies to the large number of Christians in the empire when
Nero mounted the throne, I., 69.

TALLEYRAND. His lies in furtherance of Bonaparte’s interference With the
Conclave of 1800, V., 3.

TASSO. Made laureate by Pope Clement VIII., III., 569. His last days, 560.

TATIAN. His heresy, and his “Diatessaron", I., 35.

TEMPLARS, THEIR SUPPRESSION. Origin of the order, II., 454. Beginning
of its corruption even in the time of St. Bernard, 457. Most authoritative
works to be consulted on this subject, 458, in Note. Horrible charges
against the Knights, 459. Nearly all the members of the preceptory of
Paris admit their guilt, 460. But Pope Clement V. disapproves of the
high-handed procedures of Philip the Fair, and calls the question to the
Holy See, 461. At the pontifical inquiry the cited knights avow the truth
of the confessions made at the Parisian investigation, 463. The same
guilt was evinced in the cases of the Templars of Lombardy, Tuscany,
England, and Aragon, 465. The order abolished by the Roman Pontiff, 466.
The supposed value of the arguments deduced from Villanl, St. Antonine
of Florence, Dante, Boccaccio, etc., in favor of the Templars-, 470. The
confessions of the Templars were not wrung from unwilling lips by
torture, 479. The suppression was not due to the covetousness of Philip
the Fair, 482. Much of modern sympathy with the Templars is due to
the desire of Freemasonry to vindicate for itself a respectable and
romantic origin, 484.

TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPES. See DEPOSING POWER and
DOMINION, PAPAL.

TENTH GEN. COUNCIL, SECOND LATERAN. Remedies the evils caused by
the schism of Peter “Leonis”, condemns the errors of Peter de Bru!s and
of Arnold of Brescia, and enforces eccleciastical discipline, II., 268.

TENTH CENTURY. Belled by Protestant polemics when they term It one of
intellectual and moral darkness, II., 110.

TERTULLIAN. Asserts the Roman Pontificate of St. Peter, I., 13. Becomes-
a Montanist, 36. Shows the wide spread of Christianity in his day, 60.

Digitized by LjOOQle

GENERAL TOPICAL INDEX.

71£

THEOBALD. The chosen patron of the Carbonari, V., 482.

THEODORE OF MOPSUESTE. Forerunner of Pelaglus, I., 263. Prime cause
of the Controversy of the Three Chapters, 359.

THEODORET. Asserts the Roman Pontificate of St. Peter, I., 5. Pronounced
a Catholic by the synodals of Chalcedon, but his writings against St. Cyril
of Alexandria are condemned by the Fifth Gen. Council, 360.

THIERS. Connives at the destruction of the Archiepiscopal Library of Paris in
1831, V., 249. Partly responsible for the murder of Archbishop Darboy,
VI., 94. His inordinate passion for power, 111.

THIRTEENTH GEN. COUNCIL, FIRST OF LYONS. Preludes, II., 370. Depo-
sition of the emperor, Frederick II., 375^

THIRTY YEARS WAR. See GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS and RICHELIEU.

THOMAS OF AQUINO, ST. Renaissance of his philosophy under Leo XIII.,-
VI., 181. Absurdly charged with skepticism by Michelet, 642.

THOMAS A BECKET, ST. See BECKET.

TISZA, KOLOMAN. Hungarian statesman. Forces civil matrimony on the
Hungarians, VI., 245.

TOLSTOY, DIMITRY. Procurator of the Russian Holy Synod, V., 78. His
value as a historian, 79, 88, 94, 95, 115.

TOURNON, CARD. DE. His sufferings because of his fidelity to the Apostolic
See in the matter of the Chinese Rites, VI., 675.

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. Their origin and history, V., 443. Tract No. 90, 455.

TRADES-UNIONS. Their universality, perfect organization, and influence in
the Middle Age, VI., 537.

TRAJAN. Rom. Emp. Persecutes the Christians, although he issues no new
decrees, I., 46. The yarn about his alleged release from hell, 391.

TRANSFERS, EPISCOPAL. Discipline in the first centuries of Christianity,
I., 94.

TRANSMARINE APPEALS. Not prohibited by the Second Council of Carthage
in the sense of an exclusion of appeals to Rome,. I., 267.

TRENT, COUNCIL OF, EIGHTEENTH GENERAL. Preludes, III., 511. Its
sessions, 613. The Canon on the indissolubility of matrimony, and tJhe
practice of the United Greeks, 62(L Character and authority of the
assembly, 624. The synodals enjoyed perfect freedom of discussion, 627.
It was not a fa'lure, 529. Reception of its decrees, 530. Criticisms of
Ranke, 532. Reliability of Sarpf, the prized authority of Protestant critics
of this Council, as gauged even by Ranke. 535.

TRIAVERDINS. Albigensian rapers and pillagers, II., 287.

TRUCE OF GOD. Its nature, II., 258. It was not a usurpation of civil govern-
mental authority, 264.

TRULLIAN OR “QUINISEXT" SYNOD. Not regarded as oecumenical by the-
Holy See, I., 449. Reasons for its respect by the Greek Schismatics, 451.

TWELFTH GEN. COUNCIL, FOURTH LATERAN. Condemns the errors of
the Albigenses, II., 362. Shows no regard for Otho IV., and recognizes
Frederick II. as King of the Germans, 363. Refutation of Mosheim’s
assertion that this Council introduced the doctrine of Transubstantlation,
and the practice of Auricular Confession, 369.

“UNIGENITUS”, THE BULL. Issued by Clement XI. in condemnation of the’
distinctive doctrines of Quesnel, IV., 350. The recalcitrant Quesnelllsts
supported by Cardinal de Noailles, 354. The aberrations of Petitpled, 360.
Submission of the cardinal, 366. Course of the Faculty and of the Par-
liament of Paris, 368. Afflictions entailed on the Church of France, by
the appellants from the Bull, 270.

UNIVERSITY OF FRANCE. Founded by Napoleon on the ruins of the Uni-
versity of Paris, V., 324. He orders that its provosts, principals, and:

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prefects shall be celibates, 326. The combat of Montalembert and 'other
Catholic champions against the Unlversltarian monopoly, 277, 827.

URBAN VI., POPE. See SCHISM, GREAT WESTERN.

URBAN VIII., POPE. Revises the Roman Breviary, IV., 49. The mission of
Panzanl to England, 51. The abolition of the Jesultesses, 54. Attitude of
the Pontiff during the Thirty Years War, 79. His friendship for Galileo, 92.
His attitude during the prosecution of Galileo, 93. He emitted no decision
in the matter of the heliocentric system, 106.

MARTYROLOG1ES, ROMAN. Those compiled by Usuard, Ado, Bede, Florus,
and Notkerus, I., 88, In Note.

UTRECHT, JANSENIST CHURCH OF. Its birth, IV., 339.

VALDEZ. First emissary of the Reformation in Naples, III., 442.

VALENTINIANS. Their heresies, I., 34.

VALERIAN. Rom. Emp. Persecutes the Christians, I., 64.

VANINI. Burnt for atheism and blasphemy by order of the Parliament • of
Toulouse, III., 455.

VATICAN, COUNCIL OF THE, NINETEENTH GENERAL. Its convocation,
V., 671. Reciprocal attitude of the Pontiff and the powers In the matter,
572. Invitation to the Oriental Schismatics, but none to any of the
Protestant sects, 573. Impotent blasphemies of Freemasonry excited by the
Council, 675. Regulations for the guidance of the synodals, 679. The
Pontifical Dogmatic Constitution, Dei Filius, 581. Efforts of the opponents
of the definition of Papal Infallibility, 684. Popular objections against the
doctrine, 687. Agitation among the "Liberal” Catholics, 591. Catholic
declaration of Dupanloup, 593. Reasons adduced by the inopportunists,
693, In Note. The votes, 696. The Pontifical Definition of the Dogma of
Papal Infallibility, 599. Protestant and infidel hysterics after the defini-
tion, 600. The argument of the inopportunists that the definition would
Impede the work of conversion, 602. The sessions of the Council were
calm and grave, 603. The Council of the Vatican was a supreme remedy
against the evils of pretended "Liberalism", 605.

VAUDOIS, PIEDMONTESE. Those of the thirteenth century not to be con-
founded with the Waldenses, and their belief was not that of the Vaudois
of to-day, II., 318.

VENICE, INTERDICT OF. Independent Venice firmly Catholic in faith, but
addicted to Statolatry In matters outside the body of doctrine, IV., 3. The
Most Serene violates the right of Ecclesiastical Immunity, and the Re-
public is Interdicted, 5. Effort of Bellarmine to restore peace, 6. England
and Holland foment the difficulty, 8. Sarpi adds fuel to the flame, 9. Henry
IV. refuses to countenance them, and the oligarchs submit to Rome, 10.
In this conflict the Venetians did not even question the indirect power of
the Pope to interfere in the affairs of States, 12.

VERGERIO. He offered no bribe to Luther in the name of the Pope, III., 449.
His innovations in his diocese, and his refusal to justify himself at Rome,
prevent his admission to the Council of Trent, 450. His apostasy and his
insubordination to Luther, 451.

VERNACULAR, IN BIBLE AND LITURGY. Pre-ReforAatlon vernacular ver-
sions of the Scriptures, III., 310. The Liturgical languages of the Eastern
schismatics are not vernacular, IT., 128.

VETO, RIGHT OF. In a Conclave. See EXCLUSION.

VEUILLOT, LOUIS. Life and principles, VI., 427.

VICTOR, ST., POPE. Merely threatened to excommunicate the Asiatic bishops
because of their course in the Eastern Controversy. I.. 109.

VICTOR EMMANUEL II. King of Sardinia. Annexes the Romagna, Tuscany,
Parma, and Modena to Piedmont. V., 533. In Note. Excommunicated,

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although not by name, 535. Attacks his cousin, Francis II. of Naples, with-
out a declaration of war; embraces Garibaldi; and proplaims his annexa-
tion of the Two Sicilies, 536. In conformity with the permission of
Napoleon III. to “act quickly”, he invades Umbria and the Marches, and
annexes them to his kingdom. 540. He assumes the title of “King of
Italy”, 542. Openly aids the attempt of Garibaldi which is thwarted at
Montana, 546. Frightened by Freemasonry, he seizes the Eternal City,
and installs himself in the Qulrinal, 548. Offers a pension to Pius IX., but
it is refused, 551. His death, 568.

VILLANI, JOHN. His authority as a historian, II., 437.

VIRGILIUS, ST. Disputes with St. Boniface* and appeals to Rome, I., 305.
See BONIFACE, ST.

VIRGINS, CONSECRATED. Among the early Christians, VI., 520. Nunneries
began with the freedom of Christianity, 521. Age of profession, 523.
Blessing of the veils, which were of three kinds, 524. Duties of “deacon-
esses”, 525. The “canon esses” of mediaeval times, 526.

VOLTAIRE. Value of the “Lives” by Condorcet and Duvernet, the sources of
nearly all Protestant and infidel writings on Voltaire, IV., 605. Frangois-
Marie Arouet adopts the more aristocratic name of “M. de Voltaire”, 508.
His relations with Bolingbroke, 509. His “Henriade”, 51L His "Brutus”,
512. His apotheosis of the infamous Adrienne Lecouvreur, 513. His best
prose work, “Charles XII”, 514. His “Philosophical Letters” burnt by the
public executioner, 516. Audaciously dedicates his “Mahomet” to Pope
Benedict XIV., 518. The Pompadour causes Ills appointment as historiog-
rapher of France, 519. His relations with Frederick II. of Prussia, as
narrated by himself, 521. His “Age of Louis XIV”, 526. His rupture with
Frederick, 529. His lubricious insults to “The Maid”, 630. Becomes the
Sage of Fernoy, and first pronounces his ecraaez V infame, 53L His
opinion of Diderot's “Encyclopedia”, 534. His “Essay on the Morals and
Spirit of Nations”, 535. Tries to establish a phllosophistic “convent” in
order to wage more successful war on “the infamous one”, 536. Ferney
the Mecca of phllosophists, 538. Returns to Paris, where he is idolized,
540. He is embraced ecstatically by Benjamin Franklin, 542. The Free-
masonry of Voltaire, 523, in Note; 542. His last days, and the sacrilegious
comedy of his retractation and confession, 543. His death one of rage
and despair, 546. The remains now venerated In the Paris Pantheon are
probably not those of Voltaire, but those of an unknown monk, 548, in
Note. Voltaire was no friend of “the people”, 549. His contempt for
Rousseau, 550. His hatred for Poland, and his veneration of his “Saint”,.
Catharine II., 551. He was no partisan of Liberty, Equality, and Fra-
ternity; and he despised France, 553. He was no historian. His travesties:
and falsifications in his “Age of Louis XIV.”, 556. His justification of
mendacity, 560. He was neither a genius nor a philosopher, 561. Hia
calumny on FOnelon, 326.

VORAGINE, JACOBUS DE. Value of his “Golden Legend”, VI., 579.

WALDENSES. Origin and doctrines, II., 308. Their divisions, 311. They were
not forerunners of the Protestant Reformation, 314. Not to be con-
founded with the Vaudois of Piedmont, 318. Justification of Pope Innocent
III., In the matter of his treatment of the Waldenses, 319.

WALLENSTEIN (ALBERT RALSKO). His origin and career, IV., 63, in Note.
His fall not due to Richelieu, 64. Urges the emperor to sack Rome, 80.

WARD, WILLIAM GEORGE. His connection with the Oxford Movement, V.,
451, 459, 461. His “Ideal” condemned by the Oxford Convocation, 465. His
conversion, 469.

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WEISSHAUPT. Founds the Illuminati, IV.. 427. Corrupts German ecclesiastics,
428. His doctrines, 429. His conversion. 430.

WELLINGTON. Insists on Catholic Emancipation in order to avert civil war,

V. , 232.

WESLEY, JOHN. Virulent persecutor of Catholics, and chief author of the
Gordon Riots, V., 179.

WESTPHALIA, PEACE OF. Simply a consecration of “accomplished facts",
IV., 77. Loss it entailed on Germany, 78. Reason for its reprobation by
Pope Innocent X.. 79.

WHITE FATHERS. Instituted by Lavigerlc, VI., 299.

WILFRID, ST. His history a proof that the early Anglo-Saxon Church
acknowledged the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, I., 412.

WILLIAM I. German Emperor. His duplicity, VI., 2, 30. He was an ardent
Freemason, 10.

WILLIAM II. German Emperor. His visits to the Vatican, and the boorish-
ness of his brother Henry, VI., 272.

WILLIAM III. King of England. His provision “for the further preventing
the growth of Popery", V., 161.

WMNDTHORST (of Meppen). Parliamentary champion of the German Catholics.

VI. , 14, 28, 38, 141.

WULSTAN, ST. Resigns his diocese at the tomb of St. Edward, II., 174,
in Note.

WYCKLIFFE. The affair of Canterbury Hall, II., 668. Becomes an innovator,
569. His condemned propositions, 571. He was neither the author of the
first translation of the Bible into the English language, nor the author
of the so-called Wyckliffe's Translation, 576. Differences between the
Wycklifflan and the Protestant tenets, 677. Comparative leniency dis-
played toward the Wyckliffltes, 579.

XAVIER, FRANCIS, ST. Founds the Jesuit missions in Japan, V., 392.

ZISKA. Leader of the Thaborite Hussites. His character and exploits. III.,
11, in Note.

ZIZIM, PRINCE. Son of the sultan, Mahomet II. The question of the guilt
of Pope Alexander VI. in procuring his death. III., 215, in Note.

IMUS. ST.. POPE. He did not approve a heresy when he designated the book
of Cmlestlus as “Catholic", I., 261. He received appeals from the African
dioceses. 264. The famous “Transmarine" Canon was not directed against
appeals to the Holy See. but against appeals to the “Transmarine" bishops
of 'Mian and Arles, 272.

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